


melliferous

by arealsword



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe – Hadestown Fusion, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bees, Body Horror, Butterflies, F/F, Flower Symbolism, Gen, Greek Mythology & Lore - Freeform, Insects & Bugs, Inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Spiders, Substance Abuse, Tragedy, this is a Hadestown AU in the same way that Lucifer is a Bible AU, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26674225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arealsword/pseuds/arealsword
Summary: No silver, no soul, no service, the listing declares. There is no phone number provided.Or; Thomas is dead. Let’s go to hell.
Relationships: Thomas Sanders & The Sides
Comments: 62
Kudos: 66
Collections: TSS Fanworks Collective, Thomas Fucking Dies





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was my original intention for my 2020 Storytime Big Bang – so if you see any similarities between this and Eucatastrophe, that’s why. The notes for both stories take up the same pages in my writing journal, and I’m pretty sure at least a few themes and plot beats spilled over. Just, you know. A lot weirder in execution. Which is saying something, because I’m fully aware of just how weird Eucatastrophe got.
> 
> Thanks to mouse for betaing (and sorry for neatly breezing past a lot of your plot-related comments! I decided that I was too tired to care. You know how it is). Thanks to the Joan Hivemind for general encouragement and a lot of enthusiasm over the bees! Absolutely no thanks at all to the actual literal bee that got trapped in my room while I was writing this and terrorized me for like a full hour until I could pick it up with a cup and card and carry it outside. 
> 
> **Warnings for the story as a whole:** all of this is in the tags, but it’s worth stating again just in case you skimmed over it: major character death, unreality, drugs and drug addiction/substance abuse, body horror, lots of insects and bugs and spiders getting all involved with that body horror. Basically, if you’re especially bug-squeamish, it might be a good idea to skip this one. Remus is also his usual NSFW self, but honestly he kind of pales in comparison to the rest of it, which is kind of wild. There is also very lightly implied cannibalism that I did not have the courage to follow through on.
> 
> And (full disclosure): the ending is a) a bit of a downer b) very ambiguous, so if that’s something that you don’t think you’re in the headspace to deal with, give this story a miss. Go find a fic that will make you feel good about stuff! This probably isn’t it.

But when they get there, Thomas is already dead.

“It’s strange,” says Roman thoughtfully, “because you would expect all of us to die the moment he does, right? We’re all tied to him, so when he kicked it, we should be gone too. Evaporated. Totally Thanos-ed out of existence. But, we’re not. We’re all here. Without him. Kind of funny how things work out.”

“I find nothing particularly humorous about this situation,” Logan says. “I find myself in an increasingly sombre mood, and entirely fail to see anyone around me laughing.”

“Remus is,” Virgil points out, somewhat bitterly.

Remus is, indeed, cackling. It’s unclear if it’s plain old hysteria or if he really does find this situation properly, side-splittingly hilarious. Nobody really feels like telling him to stop.

“It just had to be a snakebite, didn’t it,” says Janus, who is sitting glumly on the curbside next to the crumpled, pale body half-tangled in the long grass – eyes open and glazed over with that bright empty sheen of death, hand still limply outstretched as if reaching out for help that’s never going to arrive. “A  _ snake.  _ Of all things. And I thought pointless, baseless guilt was something that I, in particular, would never have to deal with.”

“Plenty of guilt to go around,” says Patton. He’s no longer shaking quite as much as he had been when they’d initially risen up. Which isn’t to say that he’s not shaking at  _ all,  _ just that it’s hardly noticeable anymore. “Feel free to take some of mine! All of it, if you want. I don’t mind!”

“I will  _ pass,  _ thank you very much.”

A slow, final trickle of blood creeps down the side of the body’s face. Over the curve of the cheek, down towards the chin. Probably happened when he fell to the ground, hit his head against the curb. One final concussion. The faint afterimage of an aching head echoes through all of them, although it’s fading quickly.

“He looks so small,” Virgil says softly, clenching his fists.

Somewhere above them, a bee hums as it lazily circles through the air in desperate, pointless search of nectar. Flowers everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

“Well, we can’t stand around here all day, waiting for oblivion,” Janus says eventually, tugging his cape tighter around his shoulders. “We should work out some sort of course of action.”

“We can’t just leave him here,” Patton points out, and everyone has to admit that he’s right. There’s no life left in the broken shell that they’re all clustered around. It’s just meat now. Meat that happens to look exactly like the rest of them.

Roman folds his arms. “Well, what do you suggest, a roadside memorial service?”

“Sounds fun,” Remus says, recovering from his gigglefit. “Corpse party. Let’s do it!”

And, well. It’s not like they have anything better to do with themselves.

Patton finds a couple of sticks and lays them in a clumsy cross at his feet. Janus and Roman pick flowers from nearby bushes. They make a couple of hasty bouquets and Roman reluctantly tears off strips from his sash to tie them all together. Logan says the whole thing is stupid and refuses to participate any further than standing watch and keeping an eye out for anyone who might come by. Nobody does.

By the time they’re gathered in a rough semicircle around the crumpled form of their former reason for being, it seems to have dawned upon them all that there’s not an awful lot to say.

“We are gathered here to celebrate the life and existence of Thomas Foley Sanders,” Roman begins, raising a hand magnanimously in the air, and then stutters to a half. “Yeah, uh. I’m not all that sure what I was going to say next. Anybody else want to chime in?”

“Thomas is – was...” Patton struggles. Visibly. “I mean,  _ gosh.  _ He’s us. What is there to say?”

“We love him,” Virgil says slowly. “I mean,  _ loved  _ him. I mean, we still love him. But now we just love a dead, mangled corpse, which is... a lot less of a touching, heartfelt thing to do.”

“Obviously,” Roman says. “ _ Obviously  _ we love him, but surely there’s more we can say about him. There’s got to be more. He had an exceptional singing voice. Which we have all inherited, thank you Thomas.”

“He had a... not entirely shitty taste in music and other media. Hey, we’ve also inherited that,” Virgil says.

“Thank you, Thomas!” Roman exclaims, pointing at Virgil. “Anything else?”

“Well, he was a bit of a dumbass,” Remus says, muffled. “A loveable dumbass, but like.  _ Total  _ idiot. He always got super squeamish about basic facts of biology, like – get over yourself already! It’s just sex and diseases and parasites! Old news, let’s get onto the  _ juicy  _ stuff. Like, did the emojis from  _ The Emoji Movie  _ fuck? The  _ big  _ questions.”

“Can we please not insult our dead centre of existence?” Patton begs. “Or talk about  _ The Emoji Movie _ ?”

“Yes,” says Janus. “Both of those things are equally distressing, you’re right.”

“Man, we had one fucking job, guys,” Virgil says, raking a hand through his hair. “Keep Thomas alive. Don’t let him die. Don’t let him go stepping on unexpected, deadly rattlesnakes. How did we manage to screw up this badly?”

“I mean, don’t look at me,” Remus says, half-chewed chunks of snapdragon spilling out as he speaks. He wipes his sleeve across it, smearing sap and pollen over his lips. “Stepping on snakes has always been a secret passion of mine.”

“We don’t want to know, Remus,” says Logan, exhausted.

Patton throws a handful of crumpled flowers into the air halfheartedly. They flutter back into his face, blown by the wind. He coughs, and brushes them away and they all lapse back into silence. Except for Remus, who simply carries on with his irreverent, wet-sounding flower munching.

“Good god,” says Janus. “This is miserable, even for us.”

“Yeah,” says Virgil. “Look, we’re not seriously going to just... walk away from him, are we? Like. Obviously, we’ve established at this point that we can exist without him but it’s not like we can  _ exist  _ without him.”

“Oh no,” says Patton, looking worried. “Are we going to have to get jobs? I don’t think I’ll be very good at getting a job.”

“Of course not,” says Roman, “to both of you. We’re going to go and get him back, obviously.”

“Oh, right,” says Janus. “ _ Obviously.  _ I’m ever so sorry, I forgot about our shared master’s degree in field necromancy that we obtained just last month. You’re the expert, of course. What do you suggest? A series of elaborate sigils, drawn in virgin’s blood upon his skin? Having us all strip naked, link hands, and chant ominously at the full moon?”

“If you need blood and dark magic, I’m more than happy to oblige,” Remus pipes up. “Just be aware that I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing. And the blood – well, it ain’t gonna be from a virgin, that’s for sure!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Roman says with a huff. “Both of you,  _ honestly _ . No dark magic will be involved in our heroic, unlikely rescue of Thomas’s eternal soul. No, we’re going to pop down to the underworld and retrieve him in record time. No blood and no chanting required! Hopefully.”

A short silence.

“Yeah, I’m actually with Janus on this one,” Virgil says. “The dark magic might be easier and less of a ridiculously stupid and completely  _ wild  _ idea. Like, do you even know where the entrance to hell  _ is? _ ”

“No, but I’m sure we can find out,” Roman says. “It’s only a matter of searching in the right places.”

“Probably in a phonebook or something,” Remus contributes in a moment of surprisingly helpful lucidity. “If it was on the internet,  _ everyone  _ would be going there.”

“Mm,” says Patton. “Mm, okay,  _ uh,  _ I’m not so sure about – ”

“Go off on a feral wildfowl pursuit if you wish,” Logan says, crossing his arms. “But I flatly refuse to believe that the task of ‘finding the entrance to hell’ will be as easy as looking up the address in the phonebook.”

*

The hardest part of it all, as it turns out, is finding the phonebook itself. When Roman walks into the corner store across the road from Thomas’s unlikely grave, it takes the owner a full twenty minutes to unearth a battered, beaten-looking copy of the Yellow Pages that looks like it hasn’t been touched for years. Roman thanks them extravagantly, and then hurries back to the others, already flipping through it, scanning furiously.

After a long, long few minutes of searching, Roman finds it, filed underneath ‘U’ for ‘underworld’. A tiny, incongruous entry, picked out in slightly faded black-and-white print. There is a small, unremarkable hexagon preceding the words, and then it says, quite simply,  _ Hades, _ giving an address for some several miles away.  _ No silver, no soul, no service,  _ the listing declares, just beneath that.

There is no phone number provided.

“Oh,” says Logan. “Well. I stand corrected, I suppose.”

“It’s in Florida?” asks Virgil, leaning close to the page, and then shakes his head. “Of course the entrance to hell is in  _ Florida.  _ That explains so much.”

“You’re telling me we could’ve gone there any time?” Remus demands, looking stricken.

“I can’t imagine getting in is going to be easy,” Janus points out.

“Patience, patience,” says Roman, who’s performed the admirably dubious task of robbing a dead man’s pockets to steal his phone, and is now trying to get a decent signal. “First things first, we need to  _ get  _ there.”

Google Maps says it’s five hours’ walk to the location listed in the phonebook. This is fine, because they don’t need to sleep or eat or breathe, being mostly non-corporeal extensions of one man’s overactive imagination. So it follows that they probably can’t get tired. The only thing they’re really in danger of is boredom.

The next problem that arises is something that they probably should have seen coming from the moment that Roman suggested the whole scheme.

“We are  _ not _ dragging a snake-bitten corpse halfway across Florida,” Virgil says firmly. “Especially not a corpse that happens to look exactly like all of us. Can you imagine that making the news? Can you  _ imagine  _ the Florida Man headline?”

“Yep,” says Remus. “And it delights me  _ immeasurably. _ ”

“You want to just leave him here?” Roman says, folding his arms. “So  _ more  _ snakes can get at him?”

“We should be mechanically and functionally strong enough to manage the load,” says Logan. “If we all take turns, that is.”

“So who wants to go first on Corpse-Hauling Duty?” Janus says, with a grimace. “I don’t feel like it’s – oh, look, Remus has volunteered. That’s a good start, I suppose.”

Remus shoots them all an easy thumbs-up, tugging the body higher up over his shoulder by the feet. Its arms hang down limply and sway with his movement, like stiffened mozzarella sticks. Remus appears to have eaten the remaining makeshift flower bouquets, because the ones that had been laying on the body are nowhere to be seen. “Don’t worry, I could do this for  _ days. _ Corpse-hauling has always been a secret passion of mine!”

“No, you’ve... always been pretty loud about that one,” says Patton.

Roman tears out the relevant page from the phonebook, and goes back across the road to return the rest of it to the cornerstore.

And then they start walking.

*

As it turns out, the road to hell is long and boring with a lot of potholes. Not to mention the many,  _ many  _ drivers who have no consideration for people walking alongside it, lugging an entire human body along with them. They don’t care about a possible homicide, apparently. All they care about is splashing them pointedly with as much dirty ditch water as their oversized trailer tyres can deliver unto them.

It feels like a lot more than five hours, but they do eventually find their way to the town indicated in the phonebook. Finding the exact address is a bit trickier. They have to get more specific directions from a man in chains, half-naked and hanging from an alleyway wall as hundreds upon thousands of glittering, chattering scarab beetles swarm him, gnawing hungrily at his abdomen.

“Yeah, it’s a tough place to find,” he tells Logan, who’s scribbling the directions down in the margins of the phonebook page. “Not surprised you’re having trouble. Three streets down from here, make a left then a right then a left again, and don’t forget to look down. I think. It’s been a while since I’ve been anywhere but up here.”

“Thank you  _ so _ much, kind and noble stranger,” says Roman, who is currently on Corpse Duty and is shifting the body awkwardly over his shoulder, trying to find the best and most comfortable position for it to rest. “You have no idea how hard it is to find someone that’s willing to help.”

The man hanging from the wall tries to give them a thumbs-up, but winces as a particularly determined trio of beetles start to set about the task of dragging his liver out, millimetre by excruciatingly painful millimetre. Nonetheless, he smiles. It barely looks strained in the least. “No problem at all, guys. Helping’s what I do best.”

Patton is hovering towards the back of the group, apparently grossed out by the bugs, or maybe the uncomfortable amount of internal organs currently visible. “Is there, uh... anything we can do for you, maybe? Like getting you down from there?”

“Yeah, that doesn’t look very comfortable,” Virgil contributes, wincing.

“What a kind offer!” smiles the man. “Thank you,  _ really  _ thank you, you have no idea how much I appreciate it. But I’d probably just end right back up here soon enough, and my houseguests seem pretty hungry. I’d hate to deprive them of their daily meal. No, I’ll stay right where I am – don’t you worry about me. Now, off you pop, and remember – keep looking down or you’ll never get where you want to be.”

Which seems like a pretty conclusive dismissal, so Logan reads back the instructions just to be sure that they’ve got it right, and when he confirms that they do, they say their goodbyes and take their leave.

“You boys have fun down there,” calls the man after their backs. “And, a word to the wise – don’t eat or drink anything, no matter how pretty it glitters!”

“Got it!” calls Roman, and nearly drops the body as he waves goodbye.

They leave the man to his beetles and his chains, and keep going. Three streets down from the alleyway. Left, right, then left again. It’s the right street, lined with blocky nondescript buildings and broken lampposts that tower high above them. But there’s nothing there – nothing that could be an entrance or a doorway of any kind, and no people to give them more directions.

They walk up and down the street twice until Logan snaps his fingers in annoyance and says, “The manhole cover, of course.”

Because they had been looking down but not really seeing anything but the street _ ,  _ and sometimes plain old common sense takes a minute or two to kick in properly. They crowd around the cover; leaning in to see the hexagon engraved carefully in the centre with the single letter ‘H’ in the middle of it. There’s nothing else on it.

It takes all of them together to prise it up, and it clatters and clangs like a death toll on the bitumen when they drop it to the street. And then they bump heads as they all try to peer down into the hole at once. There’s a creaky, thin-looking ladder that extends into a seemingly unending gloom. The darkness smells wet and sweet all at once. There’s no sign of light, no sign of movement, no bottom.

“Hello?” Patton calls into it, and his voice rings and echoes back up at him over and over and over again.

Logan scoops up a loose rock from the streetside, and drops it into the manhole. They all listen quite carefully, but there’s no impact to be heard.

“Well, this can’t  _ not _ be the place,” Roman says. “Someone else take Thomas, I’m getting tired.”

A moment or two of scuffling and scowling, and then Janus lets out an exaggerated sigh, and takes the body from Roman.

“So we’re going down without a plan, then?” Patton says, obviously nervous.

“Uh, no-no-no, looks like  _ someone  _ wasn’t paying attention,” Remus says, raising a finger. It happens to be his middle finger. “We have a plan, and it’s a pretty solid one! We jump down into the underworld, fight the king of the dead or whoever the fuck rules the place, get our collective life and livelihood back, and get the hell out of there, pun entirely intended!”

“Well, no, that’s not happening,” Janus says. “Obviously we’re going to  _ climb  _ down into the underworld, fight the king of the dead or whoever the fuck rules the place, get our collective life and livelihood back, and get the hell out of there. Pun reluctantly acknowledged, but not at all appreciated.”

“Oh, good,” says Patton, relieved. “Just wanted to make sure we knew what we were doing! Shall we, then?”

“I’ll go first,” Virgil says, jaw set with uncanny determination.

“No complaints from me,” Janus mutters, shouldering the body, and there are no complaints from anyone else, either.

Virgil slides into the manhole with a shaky exhale of breath and a little grunt of exertion. He hesitates for a second, and then begins to climb downwards. “Okay, the ladder seems pretty solid. Just... maybe don’t climb too close to me.”

Patton goes next, then Roman, and the rest follow, with Janus bringing up the rear. And the sweet, wet smell lingers around them and becomes even more pronounced as they climb further and further down. The walls are faintly sticky, and glisten in the dim, wavering light from far above.

Eventually, the light of the street fades completely. But that’s all right, because the walls have started to glow. Dim, faint light that they can only faintly see by.

“Most likely bioluminescent fungi,” Logan says, when asked. “The light is generated via enzyme production, and I have next to no idea why I’m telling you this. It’s hardly relevant.”

“Well, climbing in silence is starting to get kind of creepy,” Roman admits. “Can we start talking now? I want to hear everyone’s voices, but I’ll settle for just mine, if all of you insist. I enjoy talking, I want to talk, and I’m told I have a very nice voice.”

“I entirely agree,” says the woman crouched in an alcove just to Virgil’s right.

“Hey, can you  _ not? _ ” Virgil says from below as they all pause in their climbing simultaneously. “You just scared the everloving shit out of me.”

“Apologies,” she says. Her beady eyes and sunken cheekbones are illuminated by the glow of the mushrooms. Her fingers move swiftly and purposefully as she knits unknowable things with two long, curved needles.  _ Click-click-clack. _ “You  _ do  _ have a lovely voice. Just wanted to make sure you knew. Going down?”

“Well, it’s not as if there’s many other places to go around here,” Patton says as they all bunch up closer together on the ladder to look at her. “Hey, ah – are you all right?”

“No,” she says. “I’m suffering greatly as I waste away in the confines of a wretched, twisted body that was never meant to contain my vast skill and intelligence.”

“Oh,” says Patton. “Well, that’s not good! Anything we can do for you?”

“Probably not,” she replies. She moves strangely, limbs bending in all the wrong ways. Her needles flash in the darkness,  _ clack-click-click, _ and with a flourish she throws out a long stretch of shining silver weave, piling it on top of each other. “I’m going to die here, but that’s fine. I’m not alone, you know.”

Patton looks closer, and then reels back in disgust.  _ Spiders _ . Thousands upon hundred of their glittering arachnid bodies, of all shapes and species, moving over her in a living wave. Crawling out from beneath her fingernails, the shining fabric of her shirt, from under her eyelids and around her eyes. She doesn’t seem bothered by them. She seems outright  _ comfortable  _ with the situation she’s in. Well, of course she is. They supply the material for her weaving, and they keep her company – and family is family, after all.

“God, I wish I had someone who loved me as much as those spiders love you,” says Remus, sounding faintly wistful as he gazes at the legions of arachnids scuttling across her parchment-thin skin.

The woman hums in discordant agreement. “I may be disgustingly human  _ now _ , but at least I can give my children a home,” she says. “That’s all these bodies are, in the end. Unlikely homes for the things that love us like no other human ever could. Was there anything else you needed?”

“ _ Nope thank you for your time goodbye, _ ” Patton squeaks, trying to kick Virgil into moving faster down the ladder.

“There might be, as a matter of fact. We are descending in order to...” Logan gestures downwards vaguely. “Ah – to get someone we love dearly back.”

“That’s all anyone ever comes down for,” she says with a little roll of the eyes – sending dozens of spiders skittering away, up into her hairline. “What about it?”

“Any advice?”

“Don’t eat or drink anything, no matter how enticing it smells.”

“Funny,” says Janus. “You’re not the first person to tell us that today.”

“Maybe because it’s something worth mentioning.” She sighs, and casts off, and holds up a long stretch of silvery fabric, so thin as to be practically transparent. “And here, take this, I suppose you’re going to need it. I really shouldn’t be giving it away like this, but your voice is so sweet. I don’t get a lot of sweetness around here.”

Roman reaches out, and takes it from her, bundling it carefully under an arm. It’s astoundingly soft, and weighs nothing – it’s unlikely that a finer, better-made weave exists anywhere else in the world. “Thank you, my lady.”

“Don’t you  _ my lady  _ me, young man; there’s far more important people you should save your flattery for,” she says, and returns to her weaving. “Better hurry up. Time’s fluid down here. You might end up running out of it before you even realize it’s slipping away from you.”

They continue climbing downwards, and although Patton keeps shuddering and checking his shirt and skin for stray spiders, the sound of the woman’s  _ clack-click-clatter _ ing soon fades away into nothing. It’s almost as if she’d never been there in the first place.

By the time they get to the bottom of the ladder, they’re all exhausted, even though there’s no real reason why they  _ should  _ be. They sit around in what seems to be an empty maintenance tunnel for several minutes, getting their breath back. It’s not like they don’t know where to go – the tunnel only leads in one direction, and that’s where the slightly brighter light is coming from.

They get to their feet. Janus passes the body off to Patton, who’s the only one who hasn’t carried it so far.

They start moving again. The sweet smell is stronger, and it’s not as  _ wet  _ as it was before. But it’s distant, not quite there yet.

The tunnel opens up within a couple of minutes into a vast cavern. The ceiling is high enough that it’s not visible, and maybe there  _ isn’t  _ a ceiling in this place. Maybe they’re under the open sky now, and the open sky has always been this dark, and they’ve just never noticed.

Either way, their progress is impeded by a river – wider than the eye can see, rushing by them like waves upon waves. The sweet smell isn’t coming from the river, because there’s a completely different smell coming from that particular direction, and it’s rotten and rancid all the way through. There’s no liquid in this river, just a dully shining endless stream of maggots. Dead or alive, it’s impossible to say, because they move in swirling flowing patterns just like a stream would and it’s hard to see any sort of movement within that.

“ _ Eugh, _ ” says Virgil.

“I fucking love this place,” Remus says, with feeling.

“So, obviously we’ve got to get across this, and swimming’s certainly not an option.” Roman surveys their surroundings. “If I’m remembering my mythology right, which I almost definitely am, there’s got to be a boat or a bridge or something around here, right?”

“Traditionally, it’s a ferry,” says Logan.

“Oh, like that one?” Remus says, and points. A short distance downstream, something floats.

It could maybe be called a ferry if you were being charitable in your definition of  _ ferry.  _ It’s more like a small boat, but even that’s a stretch – take away the sides, and you could call it a raft. There’s a cloaked figure sitting cross-legged in the centre of it, without paddle or oar. The dark, tattered-looking hood covers all of the figure’s face and body, but it does nothing to disguise the strange twisting hunch of the figure’s back.

“Ah. You must be the ferryman,” says Janus, as they all approach.

“I must be, yes,” the ferryman agrees.

“Are you willing to take us across?”

The cloak shifts ever-so-slightly. Beneath it, glittering hundred-fold eyes watch them emotionlessly. “If the right conditions are fulfilled, certainly I will. What do you have to offer?”

“What do-?” Virgil glances around at everyone, puzzled. “Are we supposed to... give something...?

Logan holds up the torn-out phonebook page, folded over and over again so that the relevant address is prominently displayed. “No silver, no soul, no service,” he reads aloud. “I do believe payment is required.”

Roman fingers the weightless stretch of fabric still bundled carefully under his arm. “Isn’t the whole _silver_ thing supposed to refer to money? More specifically, coins?”

“Payment is payment,” says the ferryman. “And I have coins enough to last lifetimes. The weave will do.”

“Well, I’m sure not arguing. It’s not like any of us thought to bring along money.” Roman passes the precious silver-spun fabric to the ferryman. Two sets of spindly, hairy limbs extend from beneath the cloak to retrieve it, pulling it back to disappear beneath the dark drapes. A long moment passes.

“You may come aboard,” says the ferryman.

Virgil gets on first, and after a moment to determine that it’s stable enough to hold all of them, nods back at the others. Janus boards, then extends a hand to Roman to pull him onboard as well. Logan and then Remus enter the boat, and they all crowd at the back to make room for Patton, carrying the body, to come on as well.

But the moment he tries to step across and onto the boat, another spindly limb shoots out, barring his entrance. “It may not join you.”

“Wh – Thomas?” Patton’s arms tighten around the body’s legs. “No, we’ve got to bring him with us. He’s the reason we’re  _ here.  _ There’s no point in us getting across if he’s not coming too.”

“Perhaps  _ Thomas  _ is the reason you’re here. But  _ that _ is not Thomas.”

“But – ”

“That’s not a person,” says the ferryman. “How could you ever mistake it for one? See, look at it now, decomposing before your eyes. It’s only a shell, devoid of life and name and meaning. You attach a name to it, you attach  _ meaning  _ to it because it once contained the person you loved more than any other. But in death, we’re all the same. Husks that will never be inhabited again; food for the hungry things that have been waiting for sustenance for so, so long.”

“Don’t you have any respect for the dead?” Logan says after a second of horrified silence that rings over them all like a bell. “That’s – that was our – that was _Thomas._ ”

“Not anymore,” the ferryman hums, and the body convulses once, twice, and then writhes and collapses into worms that spill out all in every direction like the burst intestines of an overripe fruit. Patton lets out a distressed, horrified yell as they slip through his arms and to the ground, shaking them off his skin and clothes with the most bizarre mixture of terror and righteous anger. Some squirm off into the darkness; others crawl to the edge of the river and slip into it to be swept away with the swell of maggots.

“There is no respect for the dead down here, I’m sad to say,” the ferryman tells them. “Bodies down here are only fit for one thing – consumption. Now, do you want a ride to the other side or not?”

Patton breathes, in-and-out and clenches his fists tight, and then gets into the boat.

The ferryman doesn’t move a muscle, but the boat starts to glide off downstream almost immediately. The ride is short and strangely smooth, considering that they’re travelling across a river of maggots. Patton reaches out and finds the nearest hand to hold, which happens to be Remus’s. Remus squeezes a bit too tightly with his fingernails digging in just a bit too painfully, but it’s nothing worse than that. Virgil takes Patton’s other hand and leans into Janus’s side, and Logan bumps shoulders with Janus and lets Roman rest a gentle hand on his back. They sit in silence, listening to the faint humming of the ferryman and the squishing and squirming of the river beneath them.

The sweet smell is getting closer.

A hundred years later, and the boat bumps against the opposite bank. The ferryman watches them exit the boat from beneath that dark cloak, eyes glinting. When they all have both feet on the riverbank, the boat begins to move once more.

“See you soon,” is the last thing that the ferryman says to them, and then the boat is gone. They’re standing in a tunnel, a tunnel with a very faint light coming from inside, and the only thing they can do is start to walk into its depths. There’s nowhere else to go.

Gradually, the tunnel brightens.

The scent is so thick here, so perfectly sickly sweet that it’s overwhelming. It seems to shroud everything in a cloud. The source isn’t visible, but the smell alone is unmistakable and has been for a while now.

_ Honey. _

And now that staticky droning sound can be properly identified as well, because now they can see what lines the walls and ceilings and floors – honeycomb tessellations of wax and stripped-down wood, towering and monstrous and dripping with all the honey this world has to offer. It’s not the golden-yellow that any of them would have expected, no; it’s far darker and glows far brighter, almost red in color.

And the  _ bees _ ; legions of them, an unimaginable amount, each as big as a human fist, sitting perfectly still along the rows of honeycomb. Their alien compound eyes watch the six intruders into their home and territory unblinkingly, swivelling to follow and track their progress.

“Do you think they’re going to try and sting us?” Roman whispers. “We aren’t supposed to be here – maybe they’re going to attack.”

“I don’t think they want to sting us,” says Patton slowly. “I mean, doesn’t stinging kill them? I can’t imagine they’d want to die.”

They cautiously move forwards into the tunnel of honeycomb, through the midst of thousands upon millions of bees. The bees stay there, unmoving. Watching. Waiting.

“That’s quite a lot of honey,” Logan says. “I wonder where they obtain the nectar necessary for it. That hue is rather striking, and I seem to recall that red honey is only produced locally in the Himalayas.”

“Perhaps they venture out of the underground to feed,” Janus says, although he sounds doubtful.

“Or maybe there’s flower fields further in,” Roman suggests. “This is only the entrance.”

“Here’s a better question,” Virgil says. “That’s a lot of  _ bees.  _ But I thought this was supposed to be hell – where are all the people?”

“Maybe it’s bee hell,” Remus says with a soft little cackle that’s more like a chuckle. “The  _ hell  _ part is that there’s no flowers! And no people to sting.”

They continue through the legions of honeybees. Their wings are so delicate, shining like gold, their carapaces so perfectly black. None of the bees shift in the least, but the humming buzz continues, as if they’re somehow moving anyway.

The width of the tunnel gets smaller, so small that they have to duck their heads and crouch to keep moving through it. So small that they’re brushing by motionless, humming bees; holding their collective breath, hoping and praying that they’ll remain solemn and still for just that little bit longer.

But then the tunnel starts to widen, and the ceiling begins to heighten, and the bees aren’t as close anymore. And as they step out into the open, light floods to greet them – bright and golden. It’s not sunlight, though; isn’t warm and comforting like real sunlight would be. It’s cold, clinical gold, illuminating the scene before them in its entirety.

A town – maybe. There are buildings, certainly, and some of those buildings might even be homes. But they’re as generic as houses can ever be, all cream-and-white bricks and roofs and dripping-with-stray-honey and glowing with that faint golden light that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere.

The bees are everywhere. They swarm in great flocks of black-and-yellow over the rooftops, coming to land on the honeycomb far above and around them, nuzzling against each other and crawling through the walls with unerring focus to destinations unknown.

And here, all through these buildings and houses and homes; here are all the people. Doing what people do best: shuffling around in clumps and masses, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings and each other. As dead-eyed and blank-faced as you’d expect from the legions of the dead. Their faces blur together, features indistinct.

A bee lands on the head of a faceless shade some distance in front of them, fuzzy clawed legs tangling in its hair. Whoever they are, this person doesn’t blink or halt in its pointless wandering. Not when the bee begins to clamber over its head, crawling onto its face. Not when the bee extends its unnaturally long tongue in one elegant curl, and not when it begins to pry open its lips with practiced, easy movements – like it’s done it a million times before.

The jaw is wrenched wide, entirely too wide. The person’s eyes remain blank. The bee scrambles into its victim’s mouth. And it’s now, as it begins to drink and feed, that the human it’s eating from the inside out falls to its knees, and then to the ground, and then it only twitches – even when the bee has drunk its fill and flown off to the network of wax and honey far, far above.

“They don’t need flowers,” Logan breathes, with a twisted expression of horrified realization. “They have other food sources down here.”

“...We need to get Thomas, and get out of here,” says Janus.

There is a surprisingly cohesive mutter of agreement from everyone else.

“But where do we even start looking?” Patton asks. “Everyone looks the same around here. We could’ve walked past Thomas five minutes ago and not even realized it.”

“And it’s  _ massive, _ ” Remus adds, bouncing up on his toes to peer down the endless creamy streets. “It looks like this place goes on forever. Do you think everyone who’s ever died, ever, lives down here? Overpopulation must be an absolute bitch to deal with!”

“It doesn’t go on forever,” Roman says, and points to a location in the far distance. Because the suburbs slope upwards, subtly, and at the far, far end of everything, there’s a cabin. Darker in appearance than anything else around it, so small that you have to squint to actually see it properly. “See, it looks like that’s the edge of the honeycomb.”

“So, we split up,” says Logan pragmatically. “Covering this much area may take us months on end, but if we all go separate ways, we can cut the time in half by one-sixth.”

“Are you sure splitting up’s a good idea?” Virgil says with a faint shudder. “Do we want to become a horror film statistic? Is that  _ really  _ what we want? Because splitting the party is the leading cause of death in horror films.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure the leading cause of death in horror films is gruesome monsters of all shapes and sizes,” Remus says. “That and thinly veiled metaphors for capitalism. You know, horror movies have always been a secret passion of mine! We should compare notes sometime.”

“‘Secret’?” Janus echoes, flatly bewildered.

“Splitting up perhaps isn’t a  _ good  _ idea, generally speaking,” Logan says, “but I suspect it’s the only way we’ll cover the ground that we need to cover in order to find Thomas.”

“I don’t really want to go alone, though,” Patton points out, casting a nervous glance around at the people, who seem to be ignoring them entirely – and the many, many bees, all of which also seem to be ignoring them. For the moment, at least. “Maybe... groups of two?”

“Let’s pair off, then,” Logan suggests.

A brief scuffle ensues. At its conclusion, everybody has grabbed someone else, and they’re all looking around at each other, trying to work out what to do next.

“Meet back here in an hour?” Patton proposes, to general nods. “Okay. Okay, ah – stay safe, I love you, be careful?”

“Good luck,” Roman adds, and they all set off.


	2. Chapter 2

Almost none of the buildings have words or signs on them. In fact, there’s just about no personalisation in all of this seemingly endless town that Roman and Patton are walking through. They peer through windows and through doorways, but the houses are devoid of any but the most basic of furniture. There are some cots, where shades sleep listlessly. For the most part, though, these shattered remnants of human beings seem to just rest where they drop, waiting for the next wave of the bees that feed off them.

“There’s no food, no entertainment, no  _ nothing, _ ” Roman says, after they’ve gone through yet another one of these nowhere-homes, calling out Thomas’s name. “How do they live like this?”

“Well,” says Patton uneasily. “You know, kiddo; I don’t think they  _ do. _ ”

“Oh,” Roman says. “Oh, right. Underworld. For a moment, I nearly forgot we were six-hundred-or-so-feet under. Well, that’s cheery.”

“The whole faceless thing is kinda a dead giveaway,” Patton says.

“ _ Dead  _ giveaway, ayy,” Roman says, and does weak fingerguns before dropping his hands. “No, nevermind, that’s – ”

“ – a  _ bit  _ tasteless, yeah, maybe we should – ”

“ – next house?”

“...Let’s hurry up.”

They do. Thomas is not in the next house, or the next, but the one after that isn’t a house at all. It’s a bar. The sign over the door just says  _ SEPH’S _ , plain and simple. No style, no logo, no neon – just plain black-on-cream.

“Well,” says Patton. “I guess we can’t  _ not  _ check it out at this point.”

The bar itself is packed, people on every table and chair and upturned crate. The decor is just as bland as the rest of this place, but the everpresent golden light doesn’t seem to reach here. It’s darker, more subdued, and the darkness is a blessing. Bottles upon bottles of liquids of ever color and shade line the shelves behind the bar. Some sort of music is playing, although it’s like no music either of them have ever heard. It’s all buzzing and humming and clicking.

And perched up on the bartop counter is a Lady. There’s no better way to describe her, there’s power and radiance spilling from her in every direction in waves, even though her body language would beg heartily to differ. There’s absolutely no question that she’s in charge here.

The Lady’s eyes are glassy and strange, reflecting the gold and cream of the walls like mirrors; her wings dull and dark and ragged, hanging like drooping plants down the curve of her back. With her fading velvet-green suitsleeves rolled haphazardly up to her elbows, she’s chugging down a tall glass of lustrous golden liquid with wild abandon. A single, perfect, vivid-red pomegranate flower is tucked into her lapel, held in place with a pin.

Everyone else in this bar, this strange little corner of nowhere; they’re just as faceless and nameless as everyone else in this place. Some are drinking from filthy glasses and mugs, some are just sitting and waiting, but nobody’s talking. They’re watching her with wariness, with awe, with no emotions left as she finishes off her drink and wipes her mouth with a flourish. Her long, long tongue goes  _ slurp,  _ dragging the last dregs of the liquid gold down her throat.

Almost immediately, she reaches for another bottle on the shelves behind her – and sees Roman and Patton, at the doorway.

“Come in, come in – fresh blood, fresh blood!” she cries, words slurring together ever-so-slightly at the edges in a semi-drunken haze. She waves to them with energy but without enthusiasm. “Step right into my parlor, kids; Aunty Seph’s got plenty for everyone. Now, what’s your poison? Sunstroke, frostbite, maybe a bit of moon-madness?” She fumbles with three bottles at once, slamming them one by one down onto the countertop. They all glow with the faint natural malevolence that you might expect from radioactive waste. “Ah – no, don’t tell me, I think I’ve got it. You two look like autumn breeze sort of boys. Hm? Huh?” She grins wildly and emptily at them, eyes reflecting their images back at them, and swipes two shot glasses from underneath the counter. “Wipe those glum looks off your face, loves, you ain’t got anything to worry about in here. Take a seat, take a drink, take a load off!”

Roman and Patton exchange glances, and then Patton takes a seat on the barstool closest to her. Roman stays standing, surveying the room, even as ‘Aunty Seph’ pours them both liberal amounts of a concoction that slops and shines like oil spill.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you!” Patton says, attempting a smile, even though he doesn’t really feel like it. “We’re looking for a – a, um, friend of ours – ”

“Shit, you talk!” exclaims Seph, recoiling from them with a start. Her wings flare uselessly behind her, but she manages to rebalance herself without their aid. She immediately leans too close to Patton, so close that he can see the unnatural squamous shine of her skin. Her glass-eyes rake over him, and then she says, “Why, you ain’t dead. You ain’t even  _ real. _ What in the name of everything that chokes and crawls and dies are y’all doing down  _ here?  _ Don’t drink that!” she adds, no longer sounding quite as drunk and carefree as she had only moments ago. She snatches the shot glasses away from them with uncanny precision.

“We hadn’t been planning on it,” Roman mutters, although he’s been looking speculatively at a bottle that oozes confidence and glory in intoxicating scarlet waves, even from this far away. “Enough people have warned us about it so far...”

“Damn straight they have,” she snorts, and downs both shots, one after the other. She drops both empty glasses behind the counter, and massages her temples. “Oh, my  _ head.  _ This is no place for figments of someone’s imagination. Who dreamed you two up?”

“Well, that’s who we’re looking for, actually,” says Patton. “His name is Thomas, Thomas Sanders. He – he died. Recently. He looks like...” He flounders visibly for a moment.

“Us,” finishes Roman, and comes to sit down next to Patton. “He looks like us.” He takes a breath and offers up a wry, charming smile before taking her hand and kissing it extravagantly. “My apologies, my lady, for not introducing ourselves. I am Roman, and this is Patton. It’s a pleasure to be in the presence of such an absolutely enchanting creature such as yourself.”

“Well, ain’t’cha sweet?” she says, and clumsily pats at his cheek. “Flattery’s appreciated, but we both know you don’t swing that way, and I’m playing for the winning team myself, so you might as well drop the whole seduction scheme. I’ll tell you everything I know, no reason to hide something like that.”

Roman lets out an audible sigh of relief. “Okay, thank god. You are  _ very  _ pretty, for the record, but – never mind that. Do you have any idea where we can find Thomas? Is there any place where new arrivals live, or-?”

“You could probably find him yourself if you looked hard enough,” she tells them. “Most folks around here do remember their names, all dim-like. Yell for him and make a scene and he’ll come stumbling up to you, guarantee it. Doubt it’ll do you much good, though.”

“Why?” Patton says. “Once we find him, we can just go back across the river, back the way we came.”

“Oh, love, nobody ever leaves here,” says Seph with a hint of resignation to her voice. Her hand goes to the red flower on her lapel, and she runs a finger carefully along the petals, tracing its form. “Permanent residents only. Check in once, never check out again – the boss won’t let’cha. No, the only way you’re ever getting out is when your body’s drained of every ounce of life remaining, and your veins are so stiff with honey that you can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t twitch.”

Patton fiddles with the rim of his glasses nervously. “And, er, what happens to you then?”

“Then you’re bug food.” Seph’s hand drops abruptly from the flower. She reaches for another bottle. “And that’s a more final sort of oblivion, the sort that everyone ‘round these parts looks forward to. In their own dull, pointless sort of way of  _ looking forward to things. _ Y’all should be fine, you skirt the edges of  _ living  _ and  _ dead _ and all that; you could just waltz right out of here and the boss wouldn’t even blink. You’re not one of hers, see. You probably  _ should _ just waltz out before you get her attention.”

“We’re not going to do that,” Roman replies. “We came here for Thomas, and Thomas is who we’re going to get. That’s absolutely, positively, one-hundred-percent non-negotiable.”

“Figures.” She forgoes the shot glasses this time and swigs directly from the bottle. “Tell you what, boys. Gimme a hand for the next few minutes and I’ll see what I can dig up in this old brain of mine. No promises it’ll be any real use, but hey. Something’s better than nothing.”

“You need help?” Patton says. “What do you need us to do?”

“Drinks,” she says. “I don’t got many serving staff in here, and these old legs aren’t made for running around and handing out drinks all willy-nilly. Just a tick.” She slips down behind the bar, and starts plucking out handfuls of grimy, filthy glasses by the dozen, placing them up on the countertop. Out come the bottles, next – pulling them down from the shelves behind her with her thin dark fingertips, prising the lids and corks out.

She mixes up drinks with the matter-of-fact skill of an expert, of someone who’s been doing this for an eternity. Colors brighter than anything else down here flow together and mix into bubbling, glowing concoctions. Bottle after bottle, glass after glass, mixing them up and passing them over the counter to a waiting Roman and Patton – with a hasty last-minute disclaimer not to drink them.

“Should we be taking them to anyone in particular?” Patton asks, balancing two tall glasses filled with a dark purple light-absorbing liquid in the crook of his elbow, and taking another that rattles around like a hailstorm at the slightest movement in his other hand. “I don’t, um, see any table numbers...”

“Ah, give them to whoever. They don’t mind and they don’t care,” Seph replies, flapping a hand dismissively. “Take the empty cups, bring ‘em back. Try and encourage them to drink up, if you can.”

Roman, similarly, has his arms full of glasses. He looks around at the bar’s patrons, all alike in lifelessness. Eyes dull, souls cold, no hope left. “Why? Will it help them?”

“In a way.” Her smile is sad and sharp all at once – gentle and merciless in equal measure. “Doesn’t do much for them in the big scheme of things, but it  _ does  _ numb the pain.”

“Oh,” breathes Patton.

“That’s horrible,” Roman whispers.

“It is,” she agrees. “But there’s not much else to do for them. Living down here’s a curse like no other. Oblivion helps.” She slops out a drink into another glass and swigs the last dregs from the near-empty bottle with her long, long tongue. Her eyes glint and glimmer in dazed ecstasy. “I would know, love – oh, I would know.”

There’s not much else to say. Patton and Roman get to work. Glasses of moonshine and sunshine and everything in between are deposited in front of the wilted, unmoving people of the underworld. Patton leans in to wrap their hands around their drinks, his face twisted in discomfort. Roman encourages them to lift it to their mouths and drink deeply, all the while glancing back to the counter, where the Lady continues to pour and mix from her seemingly endless stash of brews and bottles. With a little flick of the hand, she waves them on, and accepts the empty glasses as they return to her. She doesn’t bother to wash them, just refills them with whatever’s on hand.

Eventually, though, everyone in the bar is nursing a drink in some form or another, and Seph stops mixing drinks and starts propping the bottles back into place on the back well. Roman sits back down at the bar counter, and Patton hovers nervously nearby, keeping a close eye on a pair of particularly desiccated-looking souls who look like they might be in danger of choking.

“Well – you want your boy back, you’re gonna wanna negotiate with my wife,” says Seph when she’s done clearing up, leaning heavily on the counter. “And that ain’t a pleasant task, so I don’t envy you in the slightest.”

“Your wife?” Patton blinks, turning to look back at her. “Why? Is she not nice?”

“Oh, she’s the fucking worst, kid. Eyes of flint, heart of steel, fist of iron; the whole nine yards. She has to be, ruling a place like this. No – she hasn’t bended or broken on a single matter about this honey-drenched monstrosity of a city of hers since...” She hesitates. “...Well, since we got married. So, a good long time.”

“So, why are you still married?” Roman says. He props up his chin in both hands, bounces a foot idly against the legs of the chair. “If it’s not too rude to ask. I mean, you make it sound like you don’t love her.”

“‘Course I love her,” sighs Seph, leaning up against the countertop. Her shining gaze rakes across the legions of people all around them – on crates and table and chairs, sipping quietly at their drinks, the life and liveliness dimming from their eyes. “It’s why I come down here for six months a year, every year, on the dot. It’s definitely not because I wanna be here – this place drains the life out of me, out of everyone it touches. Sometimes I think she’s started loving it more than she loves me, but... oh, don’t get me started on  _ that.  _ You don’t want to hear about an old woman’s problems, and you definitely don’t want to get involved in them. Here’s what you  _ do _ want to hear.” She points out the grimy front windows of the bar with one curving, spindly fingertip. “The big boss, the brightness of my life and spark of my heart, the queen of sweetness and light – she lives all the way up there. She doesn’t like pleading, doesn’t like grovelling; doesn’t want to listen to your sob stories or see your tears or hear your threats. So, you want your Thomas back? Get clever, or get sneaky.”

Roman and Patton exchange a long, long glance.

“Can’t you... I don’t know, put a good word in for us or something?” Roman suggests. “I mean, you  _ are  _ her wife. That’s got to count for something.”

Seph’s face crumples a bit. One long-fingered hand reaches out, as if to grab the neck of yet another bottle, but she retracts it at the very last second with some considerable effort. “You’d think, huh? Wanna know something? These drinks?” She wheels an arm around wildly as she gestures to the bottles lined up behind her like cremation urns. “Only reason they work as well as they do is ‘cause they got the strong stuff in them.”

“The... strong stuff?” Patton says. “Like... alcohol, you mean?”

“Ah, alcohol is nothing _.  _ The honey, the honey, the  _ honey. _ ” Seph’s fingers flutter an unhappy rhythm against the bartop. “Only thing that’s good about this place. And that’s the  _ thing,  _ right. Devilishly hard to get, only thing that’ll work on these folk, gotta steal it from my lover on the sly. Missus Hades is a mean ol’ boss; she guards it like it’s gold. Haf’ta sneak it out behind her back.”

“The honey that the bees take from these people... ah. I get it. It’s a drug.” Roman looks sick. “You steal from your wife, and lace their drinks with it. To... keep them happy?”

“More than a drug, kid. This honey can do  _ anything _ if you chug enough of it. Keep you young, keep you running even when your feet are about to drop clean off, make you sing like a bird, make you happier than you’ve ever been before.” She swipes a fingertip along a row of empty bottle, getting a series of dull clinks from them. “Long as you’re alive to start with. If you’re dead, it doesn’t do much except keep you oblivious. And if you drink too much of it, oblivion’s gonna follow you anyway.”

By the look on his face, Patton has finally reached a moral quandary big enough that his immediate reaction seems to be ignoring it completely and pretending it’s not happening at all. Denial is bliss, really. Narrowing in on a slightly smaller, easier reached problem, he says, “You drink an awful lot of that stuff. Maybe you should stop – it can’t be healthy for you.”

“Sure ain’t,” she agrees. “But it’s either this or be sober while dealing with this lot. And I reckon that’d drive me madder than my wife in a few days flat. Cheers,” she adds, and pops off the lid of the next bottle. She doesn’t even bother to pour this time, just swigs directly from it. Electric blue bubbles over the edges of her lips. And then she says, “Can’t do anything for you but point the way, but hopefully the two of you got some sort of plan for dealin’ with my other half. You seem sweet enough. Try not to make her angry. She lives up on the house on the hill; can’t miss it.”

Roman stands up. “Up to the house on the hill? We can do that.”

“Thank you,” Patton adds

“Good luck, kid,” Seph says with a little smile that’s almost sleepy. “You’ll need it. That, or a miracle.”

Maybe Lady Seph doesn’t see the shining neck of the tiny bottle of liquid scarlet that Roman slips into his pocket as he heads out, or maybe she does and she’s just pretending not to. Either way, she doesn’t say a word. Just watches them go, watches the door rattle shut at their backs; watches their dim shadowy figures depart down the street through the frosted stained glass. She shakes her head and spares a moment to grieve – half for them and half for herself, and then slams both hands down on the countertop, back to business as normal.

“A’ight, anybody want a drink?” she calls, voice ringing like liquid honey in the shadows of the bar. She raises a hand into the air like a queen, like she’s expecting a chorus of voices to reply with cheers and enthusiasm, and is rewarded with only silence. This doesn’t faze her, never has. No-one in this bar is as talkative as she is, and she can do all the talking herself for as long as it takes. And for now – drinks for everyone. On the house, on the tables, at the expense of her wife.

Business as normal indeed.

*

Remus says, “Let’s go to that cabin on top of the hill.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Virgil replies, and he’s right, but Remus is relentless in pretty much every situation, and he  _ wants to go to the cabin.  _ “It’s so far away – listen, we’re never going to make it back in less than an hour – ” But Remus doesn’t care about that. A one-track mind, Remus has, although it’s the sort that gets derailed with incredible regularity.

He thinks that the cabin is the place to go because it’s so out of place and something special and significant has  _ got  _ to be up there. And also there’s the small matter that every bee in this place seems to be flying in the direction of the cabin, immediately after feeding on the residents. Or whatever it is that they’re doing.

Honestly, it’s a strangely compelling argument. And it’s not like Virgil’s going to abandon Remus, especially in a place like this.

So off down the streets they go. Virgil takes the lead, hunching his shoulders and casting wary glances at everyone around him, while Remus bounces on along behind him like he owns the damned place. At first, he takes great delight in poking and prodding at the people he passes, especially the ones lying on the ground with honey in their lungs and desperation in their eyes. He twirls, tripping the occasional one up with a crooked ankle or an unexpected grab to the arm, and just sticks his tongue out when Virgil gives him an annoyed look just on the exhausted end of disapproving.

“Can you stop being such an asshole for, like,  _ five minutes? _ ” Virgil grunts. He’s got his arms wrapped around himself even though it’s the exact opposite of cold. Comfort or defensiveness, who’s to say? “They’re already dead, and they’re getting drained regularly by vampire bees or whatever the fuck. I’m pretty sure they’ve suffered enough at this point.”

“It’s what I do, Virgilicious,” Remus replies – but he stops. Not immediately, but it does happen. Maybe it’s pity, but it’s far more likely that it’s just because they don’t react to a single thing he does. And it’s just not fun without reactions.

And then they’re at the cabin. It’s impossible to tell how much time has passed; if it was an hour or a day or something even shorter. It’s not like they feel physically tired, but walking in a town where every house is more-or-less identical and nobody even tries to make eye contact weighs on you in a way that’s very hard to describe.

A short cobblestone path leads up to a house looks an awful lot like it’s half-log cabin, half-hewn directly out of the ground. Two storeys tall, strangely impenetrable-looking for something built out of wood. The windows have thick white drapes drawn tightly across them from the inside, the door has three deadlocks visible on it. There’s no garden, no outside ornamentation, no nothing.

“Do  _ not _ knock on the door,” Virgil warns, even as Remus sets off up the cobbled path. “Knocking on the door is a terrible idea, we don’t know who’s inside or what they’ll do to us. I – listen, I know you’re not going to want to walk away from this, but we can at least just look around at the outside of the place first, right? Right? Remus?”

Remus doesn’t care. He’s already knocking, and it’s not just once or twice. He raps at it insistently, not letting up even for a second. It’s supremely irritating, so it’s not much of a surprise when it only takes a few minutes for someone to show up, wrenching the door open and away from any further knocking.

“And just what do you think you’re doing?” she snaps, eyes glinting opaque and obsidian.

For a moment, even Remus is lost for words.

There’s millions upon thousands upon hundreds of bees down here in this place, and they’d passed a fair few on their way here. All of them more-or-less identical, even down to the stripes on their backs and the length of their antennae and they way they scuttle and buzz their way around the place, feeding off anyone who strikes their fancy. Every one equal in rank and dignity.

But this? This is so very clearly their queen.

Resplendent in the same white-and-cream-and-gold as the rest of this place, perfectly tailored skirts falling to the ground around her in waves. Her wings curve, translucent and shining, folded neat-and-proper right down her back. It could be a crown emerging from her curly shock of hair, or that could be a trick of the cruel bright light. She shines like a diamond, and her expression is just as hard and impenetrable.

Her name had been in the listing in the phone book, and it’s the sort of name that’s always lurking in the back of your name anyway, seeing as it’s as ancient and timeless as she is.

“Well?” Missus Hades says, and her voice is something ancient and sweet that moves slow as a glacier, slow as you please.

“Girl Scout cookies!” Remus says brightly, without even a second of hesitation. “Get yours today,  _ very  _ reasonable prices; all your favorite flavours.” He leans in confidentially, his smile never wavering. “Made with  _ real  _ Girl Scouts.”

She gives the distinct impression of blinking, despite not actually doing anything of the sort, then says, “Do you have anything serious to say to me, boy? Or did you come all the way up to here just to irritate me? I’m warning you here and now, I don’t look kindly on minor irritants.”

Virgil stills the trembling in his hands by clasping them firmly behind his back, holding himself in check. He breathes, in-and-out. Then he steps through the terror and instinct to run a million miles, and steps forwards. The struggle to push back the reflexive glaring and scowling is visible on his face, but he even manages to look relatively neutral and very nearly friendly when he says, “He – ignore him. He’s just like that. I’m – hi. Yes. You rule this place, right?”

The look she gives him is an  _ are you really this stupid?  _ sort of look.

“We’re not dead,” Virgil says. “And – and, I think that counts for something, around here. And we’re here to get a friend of ours back. And I’m pretty sure you’re the one we need to talk to, to make that happen.”

“And why exactly should I listen to you?”

Virgil smiles. It’s a painful smile, like his face is trying to convulse and split in two. “Because Remus is here with me. And Remus can be  _ extremely  _ annoying when he wants to be, and probably even when he doesn’t. If you don’t let us in to talk, you’ll wish you had in a couple of days.”

“Can confirm,” Remus adds, raising a finger. “And driving the ruler of the underworld mad has always been a secret passion of mine, so this seems like the perfect opportunity to get a new hobby started.”

She looks between the two of them. And then lets out a strangely musical grunt.

“You might as well come in,” she says, and turns in one swift  _ swish  _ of her long gold skirts. She carries herself with the determined regal exhaustion of someone who will stop at nothing, even on the edge of collapse, and leaves the door open behind her, which is as much of an invitation to come in as anything else.

So they do – Virgil clinging to the walls and corners with as much wariness as you might expect from anxiety himself venturing into an openly hostile stranger’s house, and Remus strolling along, blithe as you please.

It’s such a strangely normal home. Yes, the cream-white-yellow decor remains consistent everywhere they look, and yes, there’s ridiculous amounts of gleaming gold ornaments hanging from every wall and nook and cranny that looks to be actual, real gold – but the layout and furnishing wouldn’t look out of place in their house.

Here are the things that  _ would _ look horribly out of place in their house, and any other house, and do in fact look out of place in  _ this  _ house – the jars. The huge glass mason jars that are filled up to the very brim with red, viscous liquid, each and every one of them. Stacked up on top of each other in pyramids and rows and honeycomb-patterns, piled in corners and lining walls, pristine and untouched. Lids sealed tighter than a miserable old woman’s wallet. They shine at Virgil and Remus as they pass, trailing behind in Hades’s wake.

“There must be millions of them,” Virgil breathes, barely audible.

“I  _ did  _ wonder where all the honey went,” says Remus at normal volume. “Hoarding, huh? Fucking capitalism.”

They pass through several rooms, but Hades doesn’t stop until they’re at the far end of the house – a medium-sized kitchen with a gas stove and great marble countertops and huge shiny carving knives the size of full-length swords hanging off the walls like icicles.

As Missus Hades enters the room, several bees skitter up along the tiled floor to orbit her, bouncing and chittering like excited children. They’re bigger than the ones outside, almost dog-sized – and they certainly seem to be acting the part. At seeing them, she almost seems to soften – reaching down to cuff them lightly behind where their ears would be and push them away with gruff fondness. “All right, babies, all right – back you go, down you go. Mama’s busy right now, you hear? Got some strays to deal with.”

Virgil swallows. Looks around. There are more of those red honey-jars here, filling up shelves and counters and taking up an unreasonable amount of floorspace. This close, it’s possible to see the simple hexagon design stamped onto each of the jar’s lids, the letter ‘H’ in the centre of every one. “We want Thomas back,” he says.

She snort-laughs. “Sit down, boy. Who’s a Thomas?  _ What’s _ a Thomas? You expect me to know the name of every slab of meat who ends up mellifying down here, ‘specially when none of them have names to begin with?  _ Sit,  _ don’t make me set my kids on you.”

There is a small table at the far, darkest end of the kitchen, with two chairs tucked neatly into it. Virgil fumbles one out, and sits with a heavy exhale of air. He watches her like he’s twelve and Thomas is back in primary school, waiting behind after class to get reprimanded by the teacher for going somewhere he shouldn’t have. He watches her like he’s waiting for a death sentence. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Remus ignores the offered chair and perches cross-legged on the table, gaze roaming freely across the room as Hades shepherds her small flock of bees out of the room. She slams the door behind her after getting the last of them through, and looks to the table where Remus and Virgil are. She actually snorts. It’s dry amusement, but amusement nonetheless. “You got balls, kid,” she says, and when Remus opens his mouth with a mischievous glint in his eye – “Don’t want to hear it. Shut it, I’m try’na find something.”

Above the counter hangs a large, framed portrait of Hades holding a shorter woman in a suit from behind, pressing her cheek fondly into the other’s short hair. Both are wearing fond smiles and fine clothing. In the image, they are ethereal and resplendent in their love for each other.

Below the portrait, the living Hades prises a large cast-iron pan from beneath the counter and sets it down with a mighty  _ slam  _ onto the stovetop. “Steak,” she says firmly. “How do you take it?”

“Rawer than a prostitute’s sinfully ravaged asshole, when I’m done with him,” Remus chirps.

Virgil grabs at his arm, mouthing obscenities and horrified exclamations, and Remus shakes him off, grinning and shaking with silent laughter. His eyes are bright and ever-so-slightly deranged.

“Medium-rare, then,” Hades says, and cranks the gas stove on with a  _ crack-crack-crack  _ and a flaring of electric-blue light underneath the frying pan that rapidly fades into gold in the eternal light of the underworld. Virgil and Remus watch in silence as she picks up the jar of honey closest to her elbow and carefully, painfully slowly, cracks it open.

With utmost care, she dips the very end of a wooden spoon into the smooth unbroken surface and rolls it over and over, collecting the smallest possible amount of the bright red fluid on the tip. Holding a hand beneath it, she transfers it to the rapidly heating frying pan. It sizzles and hisses as it hits the hot metal, wisps of steam curling up towards the cream-stucco ceiling.

Hades licks her hand clean with her golden tongue, and then does the same to the spoon, savouring every last drop with near-religious intensity. Then she hooks one steel-toed boot into the handle of the freezer, flicking it open. With her free hand, she reaches into it and tugs out two raw steaks, frozen and bloody. They stain her white sleeves scarlet, but she doesn’t seem to care all that much about that. Into the honey-drizzled pan they go, two wet slaps; one after the other.

It doesn’t take too long for both steaks to be popping vigorously and browning in the pan, and for the kitchen to be filled with the heady scent of meat and honey. Virgil sits in tense, wary silence; Remus hums discordantly, and Hades doesn’t say a word or even so much as acknowledge that they’re there.

Finally, she flips the steaming, dripping steaks onto two bone-white china plates, snags two wickedly-sharp knives from the sideboard, and makes her way over to the kitchen table. Onto the table the steak-plates go with two harmonizing clatters – one for Virgil, one for Remus. Hades tugs out the other chair and sits with an unnerving sort of confidence.

“Eat up, don’t be shy,” she says, with a small smile that’s too normal and too casual to be anything but completely terrifying.

Virgil does not. He grabs Remus’ arm to prevent him from eating his own. “Remus –”

“Oh come on, give me some credit, I may be constantly on the ‘suicidal’ edge of ‘recklessly impulsive’, but I’m not an  _ idiot, _ ” Remus snorts. “We got warned like sixty times not to eat the food. This is so obviously a trap that it couldn’t more obviously be a trap if she got naked and painted ‘THIS IS A TRAP’ all over her nude fuzzy body and started doing a sexy interpretive lap dance on the philosophical nature of traps!”

“Oh, give me a little credit. I’m not  _ forcing  _ you,” Hades says.

“Well,” says Virgil. “Uh. Good. Because we’re not eating it. Why are you trying to feed us anyway? We’re not here for lunch, we’re here to get Thomas back.”

“In that case, it’s time for you to get used to disappointment,” Hades replies. “Because I don’t let my people go, once they arrive down here. My domain, mine forever. Don’t waste your breath – you’re not getting your families, friends, or lovers back, no matter how hard you plead with me.”

“But – ” begins Virgil.

“I don’t want to hear it, boy. I figured I might as well do you the courtesy of a hot meal before sending you on your way – it’s a very long way down. But don’t mistake that for sympathy. I couldn’t care less about whatever sob story you’ve been planning on feeding me.”

Virgil looks down at his honey-drenched steak. Cooked to perfection. Delicious and gleaming in the low light of the kitchen. His stomach turns over, and it’s hard to tell if it’s out of hunger or disgust.

“So! As long as we’re here and we’re very pointedly not-eating your trap-steaks.... what’s the deal with the honey?” Remus wonders loudly, with an expansive gesture at the jars and jars of the stuff.

“It’s our primary export,” Hades replies. She doesn’t blink. That could be down to the fact that she  _ can’t _ blink, but it’s hard to be sure.

“Except...” Virgil frowns. The meat in front of him smells dizzyingly wonderful, and he reaches out to push it away from him. It’s making it hard to think. “Except that – it can’t be right. You aren’t exporting  _ any  _ of this stuff. This must be years and years worth of honey; your entire house’s packed with it.”

“It’s for my wife,” says Hades shortly. She watches like them like she’s expecting them to eat the damn steak, but neither of them are making a move for it.

“Your wife likes honey...?” Virgil tries, after a second. He hates starting conversations, of course he does, but leaving Remus to fill the silence would be a recipe for disaster, and Missus Hades doesn’t seem like the talkative sort.

“Hates the stuff.” One leg crossed over the other. She is now  _ lounging _ , quite grandly and pointedly.

“Oh,” says Virgil. “That’s... that’s rough. I’m sorry?” It comes out as more of an uncertain question than anything else, but Hades doesn’t seem to hear it. Her gaze has turned thoughtful, drifted away from them. And when she speaks, it seems more like she’s talking to herself than them.

“I love my wife more than the world,” says she. “More than anything above ground, more than anything below it. I love her more than these six-sided walls and more than the bees that inhabit them. I love her more deeply and truly than anybody has ever loved before or ever will, and I know I’ll keep loving her until the end of time, which is a very long way off indeed. I know it with just as much certainty as I know that she is falling further out of love with me every day.”

“Oh, big F,” cackles Remus. “Why? The big family honey business not working out for her? Looking for something a tad more engaging? Called for the U-Haul truck a bit too soon?”

Virgil tightens his fingers into fists and breathes in-and-out sharply, because the look that Hades is giving them both seems like an ‘I am about to vaporize you in the next five seconds’ sort of look and there’s really no doubt that Missus Hades is exactly the sort of person who has the ability to follow through with that. And it feels like they’re pushing their luck  _ extremely  _ far. Well, mainly Remus is. “Quick reminder to ignore literally everything he says.  _ Please _ . The two of us aren’t affiliated in any way, except for in the ways that we are, and if I could choose to be a part of a different person to him I would do it in less than a second.” 

“Hmm,” hums Hades. She still doesn’t seem like she’s listening to them, not entirely. “My honey’s the closest thing to courage you can get without having any of it for yourself. Thing is, if I didn’t have it, I don’t think I’d be able to carry on up here. Makes you do marvellous things, my honey. It could keep a drowned man swimming with his arms and legs all gnawed off by wild sea-beasts. Could have the most tuneless singer in the world belting out an aria sweet enough to make a crocodile weep tears of joy.” Eyes distant, she stands up with a rasping and a screeching of wooden-chair-on-tile. “Food’s still on the table,” she says. “Eat it or don’t; I really couldn’t care less. Your choice.” She turns. “Try to be gone by the time I get back, either way.”

And she exits the kitchen with her bees swarming and clicking at her heels, leaving Virgil and Remus sitting at and on top of a tiny wooden table with two perfectly cooked meals in front of them that smell more like honey and enticement than anything they’ve ever had in their lives.

“Funny how it doesn’t feel like much of a choice at all, huh?” Remus says, twirling his steak knife between his fingers.

“Yeah,” says Virgil, fingers tightening around his fork. “Real funny.”

But he isn’t laughing, not at all – and neither is Remus.

*

Logan and Janus venture out in the opposite direction to the cabin on the far hill, delving deeper and deeper into the alleyways and sidestreets. None of them are dark and shady. The brightness persists, wherever they turn.

“We’re not going to find him,” Logan says, even as they open yet another door and set about the weary task of searching for the last remains of a young man with a bright, open smile. “Not here, not anywhere. This is a fool’s errand.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Janus replies, tugging his hat lower over his eyes.

“Of course I do,” Logan says. “The only question is, do any of the others?”

Janus gives the question real consideration.

“The twins almost certainly don’t,” he says eventually. “Patton may suspect, somewhere far off and distant, but odds are he’s ignoring that. Better to live in hope. Virgil, however,” he adds, “has given up already.”

“But he led the way here,” Logan points out with a frown.

“I never said that would ever stop him.”

The buildings thin out. The honeycomb does not, but there are less bees here. As the squat cream houses and paved streets stained with red drips of honey fade into rocky ground and light-scorched land, seared with burn marks. There are more people here, and here, those people don’t wander. Because where Logan and Janus currently are, every single person strewn across the land is there for a  _ reason. _

“Have you seen a man that looks exactly like us?” is what they ask each and every person they pass. Most don’t reply, just groan and sob and beg and howl insincere apologies in a desperate bid to be free of the pain. If they’re looking for sympathy, they’re crying at the wrong people.

The few who do reply are largely unhelpful, but there are those – few and far between – who do have news of the person that they’re looking for.

Fifty young women with tears of frustration spilling down their cheeks stop trying to rebuild an anthill in the middle of a sandstorm for only as long as it takes to wave them onwards, pointing them towards a destination too far off to properly make out.

“That a-way,” says a man with wasps buzzing all around him, staring longingly up at a single fig hanging above him that he’ll never be able to reach. He points northwards, an angled adjustment away from where they’d been walking. “Not that it’ll do you any good. Nothing ever does, down here.”

“You missed him by an hour or so,” says an exhausted-looking man at the base of a steep hill, wiping his brown and leaning against the coiled-up form of a giant, segmented beast that’s chittering quietly to itself as it waits for him to begin pushing it upwards once more. “You could try running that way if you want, but I have a feeling that you’re never going to catch up to him.”

The man who’s currently tied to a vast wooden wheel and being eaten alive by fireflies ceases his endless agonized screaming with some effort to let them know, “He was heading off to the gates, even though it didn’t look like he knew what he was doing.”

“Gates?” Logan wonders, but the only further information they receive before the screaming resumes is a wince and a raised finger to indicate the direction they should be heading.

So there’s nothing they can do except follow that indication. And follow it they do, on and on and on until there’s no people left and the only thing at the edge of the bright, rocky wasteland is a fence.

And what a fence it is. Tall, iron chainlinks so tightly woven that it’s impossible to see beyond its walls. Dark and black and rusted against the bright, oppressive landscape. Janus and Logan look at it, and then at each other, and then back to the fence. There’s a gate, but it’s locked tight with several massive padlocks and chains thicker than their combined resigned hopelessness, and really, it looks like it hasn’t been opened for centuries.

“There’s got to be something worth protecting in there,” Janus says. “Otherwise they wouldn’t bother putting up security measures.”

“It’s worth something to something, but is it worth anything to  _ us? _ ” is Logan’s question.

Janus looks around, then points downwards. “Let’s find out. Footprints. Recent ones.”

“Leading to...” Logan crouches, then crawls forwards on his hands and knees for a few steps, following the perimeter of the fence. He pushes at the fence experimentally where the footprints and scuffmarks end, and is rewarded with seeing the seemingly-impenetrable chainlinks give way. “Well, would you look at that?”

“A crack in the wall,” Janus says, kneeling down besides Logan. “Shall we, then?”

They push through inelegantly, Logan going first and Janus slinking in behind, and emerge in... a garden.

That’s surprising enough in itself, because the bleakness of the fence surrounding it gave no indication that something so  _ alive  _ would be within its confines. But it’s more than that, because the garden is vibrant and sprawling in a way that nothing real has ever been. It’s overgrown and wild, flowers of every species and shape and size sitting perfectly still, trees towering over and tangling around each other.

And the  _ colors _ . Dizzyingly bright in comparison to the endless patterns of cream and white and gold that’s been the only scenery up to now. Greens so verdant that they’re heartbreaking to look at. Pinks and blues and reds, violets and oranges and yellows.

“Wow,” Logan breathes, words apparently failing him, and reaches out to brush his fingers against a blooming purple mallow, as if he’s afraid it’ll turn out to be a fake of some sort.

There are no animals, no people, and definitely no bees. It’s completely devoid of sentient life – bar one extremely important exception. Because there in the middle of it all, sitting on a park bench that looks to be hand-carved and surrounded by poppies that are just as still as he is, is a man. His back is slightly hunched, and his gaze is distant as he looks out upon this abandoned, unbelievably beautiful refuge, humming a faint, long-forgotten tune.

“Of course,” says Janus, and then laughs wildly. “Of  _ course  _ you’d find your way to the most intensely rainbow-themed location in this godforsaken place. All the way through a torture pit and a padlocked fence. We should’ve known.”

“Thomas!” Logan calls, already breaking out into a run. His voice cracks. “ _ Thomas! _ ”

“That’s... that’s my name,” says the man, blinking. Sense and vitality begin to drain slowly back into his eyes. He sits up, pushing his hands against the rough wood of the bench he’s sitting on. “My name’s Thomas. Hang on, what am I – where are – Logan? Janus? What are you guys doing here –  _ oof! _ ”

Because Logan has collided with him, arms sweeping around him in an uncoordinated, desperate embrace. Thomas is cold, stone-cold dead; with no blood pumping through his veins, and honey on his breath. But he is  _ here,  _ he exists, he is wonderfully present.

Tears are spilling down Thomas’s cheeks, slow and steady, but without any energy attached to them. His arms come up around Logan’s back – careful, bewildered, like Logan’s the fragile one and if he hugs back too hard he’ll shatter into a million pieces. “What happened to me? Where is everyone else? Why do I feel so... so  _ cold? _ ”

Only seconds later, Janus is there too. He doesn’t push Logan aside, simply folds his arms fiercely around them both and buries his head into the crook between Thomas’s neck and shoulder, and does not let go. “Dreadful questions, Thomas, absolutely terrible. Not relevant at all. That’s exactly why I’m not answering any of them right now, and I’m just going to sit here and hug you for the rest of time.”

“Janus,” says Thomas, and it sounds like it’s meant to come out as an exasperated admonishment, but really it ends up being quite a lot like a sob. “Janus, I’m cold.”

“I know, I know – I’m here. We both are. Shh.”

“I don’t think I’m meant to be this cold. I don’t think  _ anyone’s  _ meant to be this cold.”

It takes a while for Thomas to calm down enough for either Logan or Janus to feel comfortable dropping what is essentially a considerable bombshell of information onto him. But time doesn’t seem to flow in the same way as it usually does, and the garden is unchanged from how it’s been in any way when Thomas sits up and blinks twice and asks, “What happened to me?”

They explain – no lies, no sugarcoating; what would be the point? – and then wait for him to react. There’s really no other way to do it.

“I’m dead,” Thomas says blankly, and blinks. “Well... huh. I’d been hoping for more, uh, pearly gates and choirs of angels, but I guess ‘technicolor garden completely devoid of life’ isn’t a bad second option.”

“This area is perfectly fine, I suppose,” Logan says, an arm coiled around Thomas’s back. “It’s outside the gates I suspect that you’d begin to have a few issues with.”

The garden has an eerie sort of stillness to it, now that they’ve spent some amount of time in it. Sure, there’s colors and shapes everywhere, but... it’s all almost plastic-like in its perfection. Life everywhere, but no real living.

“Why did you end up coming here, anyway?” Janus asks, watching a tree of flourishing cherry blossoms as if he’s hoping they’re going to sway in a nonexistent breeze at any moment. “It really is very out of the way, all things considered. And _how –_ how did you find your way into this place?”

“I wish I could remember,” Thomas says, tracing patterns in the dips and whorls of the bench they're all sitting on. He leans into them, and they lean back, and they press together like that. “All I  _ can  _ remember is everything being bright, and then hearing this... this horrible  _ buzzing.  _ And knowing I needed to get out of there as fast as I could, before whatever was making the buzzing found me and... did something. I don’t know what I thought it’d end up doing.”

“Nothing pleasant, I can assure you,” Logan murmurs. “How long have we been here?”

“I can’t even remember how long  _ I’ve  _ been here,” Thomas says with something that’s not quite an incredulous laugh. “I don’t look any older, but... that doesn’t mean much, does it?”

“The others are probably waiting for us,” Janus says. “We should go. Get out of here while we still can.”

“They’re here too?” Thomas smiles, although it seems to be an emotion that takes a slow, steady sort of difficulty to express. “You all came.”

“Of course we did.” Logan, still holding Thomas tightly, pulls them all to their feet. “The probability of us ever finding you was very, very low indeed – but I’m glad we took that chance.”

Together, unwilling to let go; they walk to the crack in the wall.

“This is a sad sort of garden, isn’t it?” Thomas asks, casting one final glance around the bushes and trees and flowers and vines. Growing into each other, around each other. The whole place is smothering itself slowly. “I don’t think I was supposed to come here.”

“I don’t think  _ anybody _ was ever supposed to come here,” Janus says, and his hand curls around Thomas’s, just that bit tighter. “But then again, I suppose it’s rather telling that nobody ever turned up to throw you out.”


	3. Chapter 3

Finding each other isn’t as difficult as it probably should be. Virgil and Remus are descending the hill, Roman and Patton are ascending; and when Logan, Thomas and Janus emerge from the garden, they are inexplicably exactly where they need to be. There is a long moment of extreme confusion on everyone’s parts, and then everything seems to happen at once as the reality of Thomas’s presence dawns on them.

Roman presses kisses to Thomas’s forehead, cheeks, every exposed inch of skin; with enough intense adoration to make any worship-starved god weep. He doesn’t seem to care about the lingering chill or how parchment-like his skin is.

Patton just wraps him up in a hug tight and desperate enough to rival Janus and Logan’s own from earlier, and sways side to side, humming wordlessly.

Remus punches Thomas on the shoulder, beaming widely, and then pauses when Thomas doesn’t react at all to what should have been by all rights an intensely painful experience. And then, not to be outdone by Roman in the least, he licks Thomas on the cheek - wet and messy and oh-so perfectly Remus in every way.

And Virgil’s quieter than he should be, but he still comes forward and latches onto Thomas, arms coming around his neck. He presses his face into Thomas’s hair and breathes in honey and ashes and the faintest traces of flowers. “Look at you, you’re more emo than I am,” he says. “Trying to beat me at my own game?”

Thomas manages a smile at this, even though his eyes remain just as dead as the rest of him. “It’s not like I  _ meant  _ to die.”

Virgil draws back. His eyes are slightly red-rimmed, but his face is dry. “Damn right you didn’t. Don’t ever pull something stupid like this  _ ever  _ again.”

“Or you’ll kill me yourself?”

“Or I’ll have to do something equally stupid like  _ coming after you.  _ Again. We all will.”

Into a circle they go, huddling around and casting cautious glances around at a world that doesn’t seem to care that they’re there, not at all. The only question is, how long will that last?

“So,” says Logan. “We found Thomas. I can only assume the rest of you didn’t manage to accomplish anything quite as useful.”

“Met Hades,” Remus supplies. “She seems nice. Told us we couldn’t just walk out of here with Thomas, but I’m guessing that’s not gonna stop us?”

“You’re guessing correctly,” Logan replies with a tight little slant of a grin.

“You met Hades? We met her wife,” Patton volunteers. “I mean, I  _ assume _ that’s the same person and the right wife. She said pretty much the same thing, that we’d have to convince Hades to let Thomas out, but... maybe we don’t need to do that?”

“Oh,  _ Patton! _ ” Janus says, a hand clasped to his chest. “Are you suggesting we just waltz right out of here, hand-in-hand with our dearest Thomas, without so much as a by-your-leave to the queen of the place? That sounds dangerously close to  _ breaking the law! _ ”

“What law?” Patton replies. “The law that says that everybody down here gets to be attacked by giant vampire insects every ten minutes and get the soul sucked out of them? The one that says the only way to dull the pain is to drink yourself into oblivion? The law made by someone who sits up on top of that hill, telling people that they aren’t allowed to leave no matter how much the people they’ve left behind love them and miss them?” He takes a deep breath. “...I think I’ve found at least one law that I don’t like very much. And I’d like to smash it to bits with a rusty hammer. If that’s all right with you.”

“More than all right,” says Thomas, squeezing his hand faintly. “I want to leave.”

“Well said,” Janus says after a second, looking a bit stunned.

“I mean, what’s she going to do?” Roman says. “Stop us? If we move fast enough, I bet you anything we can get to the ferryman without a problem – then we’re home free.”

“Well, the exit’s that way,” Virgil says, pointing. “What are we waiting for?”

They’re waiting for someone to ask ‘what are we waiting for’, as it turns out. They start to walk, and nobody seems to pay them any attention, despite a concerted effort to keep their heads down and keep to the shadows. The people don’t care and the bees aren’t interested in attacking anyone willing to fight back.

“I can’t wait to feel warm again,” Thomas hums, the tiniest of pleasant thoughts that nonetheless has a sort of beautiful warmth in itself.

“Piles and piles of blankets,” says Patton wistfully. “How many blankets do we have at home? Let’s take all of them out and bury ourselves in them.”

“Start a fire,” Remus says, closing his eyes briefly against a sudden rush of dizziness. “Get  _ really  _ warm.”

“We don’t have a fireplace,” starts Logan, and then, “Ah. Inadvisable.”

And it all seems to be going so well, because the exit is in sight and with every step they take it’s like Thomas is remembering how to live. But, see, the thing is that they are far, far below ground. And here in the underearth, the walls are lined with hundreds upon hundreds of bees with multifaceted eyes that glitter like bright coal. And if those eyes are watching constantly and fiercely loyal to their mistress,... well, then it might not be much of a surprise at all if Missus Hades comes hunting, unwilling to let anyone at all escape.

Wind like a storm, like a thousand wings beating in tandem. Buzzing like an endless anger, like electricity searing through rusty wiring. Roman  _ yells  _ and Janus lets out a raspy rattle of a screech and they all curl inwards, trying to protect themselves and the others and  _ Thomas above all else  _ from the sudden onset of the insects that now surround them. And then a  _ crack  _ and a  _ flash  _ and there she is, standing on the lip of the nearest roof, hands clenched tight as bulldog’s teeth and wings flared magnificently behind her. Incandescently bright.

“I told you, you can’t have him,” Hades says, and it’s not even  _ angry  _ in the way that you’d expect it to be. It’s calmly furious, still like barely-rippling water, the breath before a storm. “I oughta tear you all limb from limb.”

“What do  _ you  _ care!?” Virgil snaps back, grabbing Thomas’s wrist. “You don’t even know him from anyone else down here! We’re going to take him, and leave you to your honey and corpsefarming, and you won’t have to deal with us ever again. Why is that a problem?”

“Nobody.  _ Leaves, _ ” she snaps, this time with considerably more force, and she spirals down to meet them on the ground. It shakes where she lands, marble cracking beneath her impact. One, two, three steps and she’s right up close to them and she’s towering over them. The woman herself, a storm of fury.

“You’re disgusting!” Patton shouts; eyes widening as he does, like he can’t believe he’s saying it. Nevertheless, onwards he ploughs. “You – you’re treating these people like  _ pigs!  _ You keep them caged up in this horrible place just so your bugs can eat them and you can have all their honey for yourself! What are you even doing with it? Why do you need so much honey?”

Nobody’s around except the bees; everyone’s retreated back into houses and buildings – even the most drained of the shades have some functioning amount of self-preservation when the damned Lord of the place is on the warpath. But even if there’s only bees and walls left as their witnesses, everybody knows that walls have ears. And despite a desperate lack of things growing and blooming down here, the grapevine in the underworld is one of the most efficient in existence. The walls can hear what the Queen is saying, and while the Queen is the one who gives them a home and an existence, there’s someone else down here who loves them in the only way they’ve ever known for a long, long time. So it’s dull whispers, the vaguest of sighs and hums, person to person from ear to ear.

And before Hades can even draw breath to reply, her wife has arrived to stop her.

“ _ Hades! _ ” Lady Seph roars, throaty and rasping all the way, and down the street she comes. Mistress of the house, lady of the underground; she of the coins and dried fruits and earth – sweeping forward like a plague, all the bees bending and parting around her. “Get away from those kids, or lord help me I’ll – ”

“You’ll  _ what,  _ lover? Last I checked,  _ I  _ was the one who ruled this place. Who are you to question the justice I plan to serve out?”

“ _ I am your wife! _ ”

Queen of sweetness, queen of light, ruler and host of many, she who binds all equally and fears none; this is exactly what she did not want to hear. She rears up, spins around, and spits, “ _ Sure  _ you are! When was the last time you acted like it?”

And now the two of them are barely paying attention to the very people they were fighting over. But the argument’s not even about them, not really. It’s only a convenient excuse, a catalyst for centuries’ worth of slowly festering bitterness and misery between them.

And so Logan herds them all backwards, pushing and shoving them back towards the edge of the buildings, where they can press themselves up against the nearest wall and stay out of the danger zone. They’ve been granted a brief reprieve, and it’s only logical for them to seize onto it.

“They’re married,” Roman says, nearly a whisper. “But they’re not getting along at all. Why – what - ?”

“Now, this is just a guess, but I have a feeling it didn’t always used to be this way,” says Janus, who’s holding Thomas’s hand tight enough to bruise.

“What do you mean?” Patton asks.

“The garden,” breathes Thomas, eyes fixed on the single pomegranate flower tucked into the breast pocket of Seph’s suit-jacket, somehow flourishing – despite everything. The brightness, the vivid coloring – it’s entirely too reminiscent of somewhere  _ else _ down here, somewhere untouched by honey and gold. “It’s  _ hers,  _ isn’t it?”

“Which makes it a logical enough conjecture to extrapolate that the fence and the chains are the work of Hades,” Logan says. “But when? And why?”

“Bees need flowers to survive,” says Virgil. “And to make honey.”

“But they’re not making honey from the flowers,” Remus adds. “They’re making it from the  _ people.  _ Which means...”

“Something went wrong,” Roman concludes.

Now, they could run, but where would they go to? There’s only one way out, and it’s being blocked by two feuding lovers whose anger and rage could tear the world apart if left to fester. Into the rest of this dripping shining town is the only other option, and Hades owns the whole damned place; could find them in an instant. Gotta think fast. Caught between a buzzing rock and the sweetest hard place of all.

“And  _ you _ ,” Hades snarls, and she turns back to them, and – nothing. They’ve got nothing. None of them have the first clue as to what to do; not Thomas, not Logan, not any of them. They’re finished, they’re done, they’re through. There’s no possible way out of this.

Unless there is.

Unless –

Roman takes that little bottle of liquid scarlet from where it’s been tucked neatly away inside his pocket, and uncorks it. His fingers do not shake, because he is a hero and heroes don’t tremble when they’re about to save everyone in a grand dramatic gesture, but he does have to take a very deep breath indeed before he tilts his head back. And pours it down his throat, drinking deeply. He swallows, and it burns like whiskey laced with gasoline.

And he opens his mouth and he  _ sings. _

Anyone who knows Roman – who knows Thomas, who knows  _ any  _ of them and all of them in equal measure – would have told you that he wouldn’t need the honey. He sings like a bird already; sings like a  _ prince.  _ His voice rings like sunlight, makes anyone nearby turn their heads and crack a smile. And sure, his voice is pretty enough for someone human and mortal and transient – but it wouldn’t be pretty enough to do the job. Not for what he’s doing here and now.

Here, now; his voice shines like the scorching heat of the sun – overwhelming and dazzling, ringing off the cavern walls in cumulating echoing waves, and making every being living down here sit up straight and pay attention and _stare._ He’s not just one bird, he’s the whole damn flock. There are no words, because there don’t need to be words. He is singing what they need to hear, and what they need to hear bypasses any need for verbal intent.

Sides and bees and shades alike, all listening and swaying to a tune like no other. And up there at the front of it all, the Queen of the whole bright and buried place – she freezes, hand still outstretched before her. Still facing her wife, she just stands there. Listening. Silent as the grave, not even a flutter of her wings. She could be a statue. She could be just as dead as the rest of them.

Love is not the strongest force in the universe, but it does fall pretty high up on the list, all things considered.

And once upon a time on a crisp bright day before mortal feet had ever dared to touch the earth – in a land where the grass was plenty green and perfectly lush and the trees sang with the wind and the colors of the flowers were drizzled across the earth like fine honey – once upon a time, a lady with a granite-heart and diamond-eyes fell in love with a brown-smudged girl digging in a garden, up to her elbows in a flower bed. In a time before honey and before empires of white and gold and before countless bottles stacked upon countless shelves, they loved and were loved and lay in a bed of soft clover and bright blooms under a galaxy-drenched sky, holding each other close. This is what Roman sings about.

Now, folks like Hades and her kind – they never cry. They  _ can’t  _ cry. They don’t have the eyes for it, and some might say they don’t have the hearts or souls for it either. It’s just the way of the world; it’s how things always have been. But on this day and in this place, anyone who was there to tell about it would swear blind that glimmers of silver streaked the Queen’s checks like rain on a windshield, there for all to see.

Wordlessly, she holds a hand out to her wife – long fingers uncurling one by one like a flower opening itself out to the sun. And just as wordlessly, Seph takes it.

And so they dance.

They waltz like the swirling of a breeze and like the rising of a time; arms around each other’s backs and hand-in-hand, moving just as fluidly and freely as time unspooling on a bright spring morning. They have only eyes for each other, and the crowds move outwards to let them pass. Seph’s bare feet and Hades’s steel-toed boots, moving light as anything across the glowing white cobblestones. They sparkle and shine like they’re young again.

Finally, they come to a natural rest, twirling to hold each other close in a moment of perfect stasis. And then Hades is bowing her head and wiping at her eyes. “Do you remember... oh, do you remember, when you first came to live with me, we planted a garden?”

“Yes,” says Seph. “Oh, yes, I had nearly forgotten. All the plants and seeds and saplings I’d brought down with me – we cleared out a place in the dirt at our feet and piled it high with life. You said it’d be food for the bees, that they’d been starving something awful down here with nothing to eat.” She looks up at her wife. “What happened to that? Why did we lock that garden up?”

“I was afraid there wouldn’t be enough,” Hades whispers. “Thought for sure that they’d end up starving if all they had was flowers.”

“Fool,” Seph says, but it’s choked and affectionate. “Give the bees something proper to eat, and there’ll  _ always  _ be enough. Human flesh and souls was never gonna cut it.”

“We’ve fallen so far apart,” Hades murmurs. “Do we even love each other any more?”

“’Fraid I don’t know that,” Seph says. “I do know I  _ want  _ to.”

They bend together, forehead to forehead, and breathe each other in. Arms around each other’s backs, meeting perfectly at the centre. Their lips brush, and it’s not a ravishing or passionate kiss by any means but there’s an adoring, solemn weight to it all the same.

And then Hades curls out of it and looks back at Roman, who has fallen silent – all his words unravelled, shuddering and shaking as he tries to catch his breath.

“All right,” she says. “You want your man back? You’re going to need to work for it.”

And so she tells them what they need to do. It’s an old deal, and a well-worn one at that.

“You,” Hades says, gesturing at the Sides, “walk in front. One-by-one, single-file. And  _ you – _ ” A spindly finger levelled right at Thomas. “ – walk behind them. All the way through the streets, all the way down the tunnels, all the way up to the surface.”

“And the catch?” Janus says softly.

“No catch,” Hades replies. “Just two more conditions.”

“Hades,” Seph says. It’s just one word, but it’s halfway between a warning and a plea. She is ignored.

“If you make a single noise, you’re gone,” Hades tells Thomas, who stands silent and still, arms wrapped around himself as if to ward off a chill that’s as much a part of him as his flesh and bones and mind are. “No speaking, no whispering, no humming, no footsteps.”

And then, to the Sides, “And if any of  _ you _ turn back to look where you’ve gone, even for a second – you’re gone too.”

She does not explain what  _ gone  _ means. Maybe she doesn’t think it needs an explanation.

Maybe she’s right.

“And that’s it?” Patton asks.

“That’s it. Make it up to the surface, and you’re home free.” She smiles, and it contorts the features of her face strangely, like she hasn’t done anything of the sort in a very long time – or like she’s trying to choke back boundless rage. “I’m not an unreasonable woman. It’s a simple task and I’m sure you’re more than capable of completing it.”

“ _ Hades, _ ” says Seph again, her voice breaking.

Hades lets out a half-chitter of irritation and then says, “You may have a minute to prepare yourselves. Please excuse me.”

*

They huddle together in the relative shade of an alleyway, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, heads bent together so close that they can feel each other’s breath.

“It’s a trick,” says Janus. “A trap. It can’t  _ not  _ be.”

“She wouldn’t try to trick us, not after what Roman did for her,” Patton says. “I mean, look at them. They’re  _ happy.  _ Did they look that happy before?”

Indeed, the Queen and her wife stand side by side, hands interlaced so tightly it seems impossible that either for them ever intends on letting go. They speak kindly and softly to each other, voices a low buzz. But Hades’ eyes are fixed on Thomas and the others, fixed unblinkingly. They’re cold and dark and glimmer in the brightness.

Roman himself looks pale and shaky and when he speaks his voice cracks painfully. None of the previous honey-sweet fluidity remains. “It certainly  _ seems  _ that way. But when it comes to dealing with tyrants and rulers...”

“We need to be careful,” Virgil agrees. “ _ So  _ careful. More careful than we’ve ever been before.”

“We can do this,” says Thomas, pressed in the centre of the group. “I mean, really – I’ve got the easy part. I just need to keep my mouth shut, all the way up. How hard can that be?”

“Logically speaking,  _ we’re  _ the ones who have it easiest,” is Logan’s opinion. “You must stay silent the whole way through, even down to ‘footsteps’, as she put it. All we have to do is stay facing away from you. That does not seem all that difficult of a task.”

Remus lets out a delighted bark of laughter. “Ha! Oh, Logan, that’s  _ sweet. _ ”

“That’s how it should go, in theory,” says Janus. “And I’d  _ love  _ to live in theory. Everything works out in theory.”

Bare feet click and scrape on the smooth cement floor, and they look up to see Seph standing over them. Her face is sad and strange. “Time to go, kids.”

Patton forces a smile. “Any advice?”

“If it’s any consolation, this is more or less exactly what it looks like.” Her fingers knit together tight, like she’s holding herself in restraint forcibly. “She ain’t gonna come in swooping in at the last second to tell you she never meant to let you go. If my wife says you make it to the top and you walk away free, that’s what’s gonna happen.”

“But?” Janus prompts.

“But it’s a long way up. And my wife is a fair woman, but she sure as hell ain’t a kind one.”

They exchange glances. Everybody reaches out, one by one, to squeeze Thomas’s hands tightly – even Remus.

“Don’t worry,” says Thomas. “I’ll be right behind you the whole time.”

Janus shakes his head. “Now, isn’t that funny? We came all this way to rescue you – and yet, you’re the one reassuring us, at the end of it all.”

“This isn’t the end,” Logan says. “Only one final stretch – the denouement. We’ll see you on the other side, Thomas.”

They arrange themselves, single file. Logan takes the front – he knows exactly where to go. With him leading, there’s no way they’ll get lost. Right behind him, Janus. Then Patton and Virgil, both hunched and worried in entirely different ways. Remus stands just behind them, with Roman right after. And Thomas is there at the back, of course. He takes a deep breath – even though the air he inhales is completely unnecessary in every respect – and lets it out, as if to reassure himself with one final, soft sound. And then he silently steps into place at the back of the line.

They’re all no more than an arm’s length from each other. Close enough that they could all reach out and touch each other’s back, far enough that they won’t trip and stumble over each other should they slow down. Behind them, Hades and Seph and the millions of shades and bees watch them with silence – and no small amount of anticipation. The excitement is tangible, surprisingly so.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Remus demands after a moment. “Let’s get this hagfish slime on the festering wound already!”

“I had assumed we would receive some form of cue or prompt,” says Logan from four places in front of him. “I suppose now’s as good a time as any.”

“Just go already,” Virgil says. “And, Thomas? – don’t go wandering off, all right?”

Thomas cracks a very weak smile, but doesn’t respond.

Logan begins to walk, and everyone else begins to follow.

And far behind them, a conversation can just barely be heard – drifting up to them on a nonexistent breeze.

“You let them go,” says Seph.

Hades’s eyes are fixed on their retreating backs. “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Would’ve preferred you did the deed, no strings attached.”

“I know, love. I know you would.” They are hand-in-hand, shoulders pressed together – closer than they’ve been for centuries now. “Just like you know I can’t do that.”

“There are rules,” Seph sighs. “Gotta earn your happy ending, huh?”

“And earn it, and earn it, and keep on earning it.” Hades breathes, in-and-out, and then looks over at her wife, properly. “We’ll open up the garden. Tear down the gates, shred them down to scrap metal. See where it goes from there.”

“We gonna try again, then?”

“I’d like that.” Their hands twist together, pressing into each other like vines growing in tandem. “We fell in love, once. How hard can it be to do it all over again?”

But enough about  _ that _ . Theirs is a tale as old as time. They have all of the rest of eternity to build themselves a happy ending, a fair and just empire in their world down below.

And there are seven others who have much less time on their hands, and a hell of a lonesome road to walk.

So – about that deal.

*

It’s an old deal, and a well-worn one – and an exceptionally cruel one. Hades might be fair enough, and she might love her wife enough to at least give a pack of interlopers a  _ chance,  _ but that doesn’t mean that she has to hand victory to them on a silver platter. Really, she’s wholeheartedly rooting against them. If she lets them go and lets them succeed just like that – well, then she’s a spineless queen, and soon enough everyone will be clambering for a ticket out. And she certainly can’t have  _ that. _

Thus; the deal. Cruel in a way that might not be immediately obvious, which is what makes it so clever. You might think that walking all the way from below to above without looking back or saying a word would be easy enough, but it’s not that simple. Because there’s nothing – not drink, not poison, not honey,  _ nothing  _ – that seeps into and corrupts someone’s mind quite like doubt. And there’s nothing that seeds doubt quite as well as the unknown.

It’s all well and good to stand your ground and shout at the injustices of the universe and face down queens and cruelty when you’re standing with your family all around you – but take away that family, make it so youprint can’t even look each other in the eyes or talk freely, and suddenly what do you have? Dissent, disaster, dissolution just waiting to happen. Doesn’t matter how close-knit the group is, there’ll always be a way to tear it down.

Missus Hades ain’t cruel. She’s just sad, and scared – and horribly, deeply in love.

Maybe that’s worse, somehow.

Off they go, through the tunnel that goes from wide to tight to wide again. They step over honeycomb and duck their heads so they don’t hit it on the roof.

“The bees are still watching us,” Janus notes, more to break the silence than anything. “Do you suppose they actually care if we make it out or not?”

“Maybe they’re watching just to make sure we don’t look back,” Patton suggests.

The tunnel darkens, and then opens up, and the river is there – squishing and oozing and writhing in all its rotten, rancid glory. The boat is already docked neatly flush with the river’s edge, waiting for them.

“No payment required this time,” the ferryman says before anyone can so much as open their mouth to ask. One arm goes out, beckoning. One by one, they step on and sit, lined up one in front of the other. Nobody looks back.

The boat sets off.

“Is Thomas here?” Virgil asks the ferryman after only a few seconds. His hands shake, and not because of fear or nerves. He places them in his lap to prevent anybody behind him from seeing. “I mean, did he get on the boat with us? I didn’t hear anyone else get on.”

“That means he’s doing this right,” says Roman from near the back of the boat. There is a split second of hesitation on his part, and then he says, “But... is he? You can turn around – you can tell us. Is he sitting at the back of the boat?”

“ _ Please, _ ” says Patton. “All we want to know is if he’s there.”

The ferryman does not say a word – only drives the paddle firmly into the river of rot and decay, and keeps on propelling them forwards. The journey takes a second and takes forever, and no matter how much they ask and plead and beg, their spin doesn’t give a single thing away.

And then they’re on the riverbank, and the stretch leading back to the ladder and back to the topside of the world seems longer than it had been coming in.

“Only one thing for it,” Patton sighs, rolling up his sleeves. “Let’s get going! The quicker we start, the quicker we’re home.”

They begin to walk. Thomas is there, every step of the way. He is ever so careful about it, placing one foot in front of the other with not so much as a crunch of gravel or a whisper of fabric to give his presence away, even though it just about kills him to do so – or it would, if he weren’t already dead. He knows that none of them are entirely sure if he’s there, and he knows that they’re going to start to doubt his presence entirely, and he knows he can’t do a thing about it.

So he just clenches his fists and steps as quietly as he can and mouths silently over and over,  _ I’m here, I’m coming, I’m here  _ in the hopes that they’ll understand, somehow – understand like they always do.

Hope isn’t always enough, though.

Thomas  _ can’t  _ speak, but the others  _ don’t  _ speak, and maybe they should, because if they were talking, maybe they’d realize what’s happening.

See, Roman’s not doing so well. And he’s at the back, so nobody can  _ see  _ that he’s doing so well. His body jitters and shudders in rejection and withdrawal of the amount of honey he’d consumed in such a short amount of time. His skin glows and his arms convulse and twitch and the occasional devastatingly melodic hum slides from his throat with a buzz like finely tuned strings. Nobody asks him what’s wrong. Maybe they think he’s trying to comfort himself, or comfort Thomas, or the rest of them – and Roman doesn’t comment on it either.

Only Thomas can see what’s going on, and Thomas can’t say a word – not to ask what’s wrong, not to warn any of the others. He reaches out to touch Roman’s back – to reassure him? To help, somehow? – but his fingers are always just a few inches shy of contact no matter how fast he walks to catch up or how much he strains.

Roman hangs back, further and further, until he and Thomas are trailing behind everyone else like lost punctuation marks. He’s limping and stumbling, and wincing. He’d drank down the bottle, taken  _ all  _ of it, when only a drop or two would have sufficed – not that he could have known. And it worked, of course it did, but now he’s paying for it.

“I’m afraid I may have to leave you far too soon,” Roman says quietly; too quietly for anyone but Thomas to hear him. “Not the most noble of deaths – but then again, I  _ did  _ already have my big moment.” He takes a breath, and the air moving through his lungs whistles and sings. “Tell them I’m sorry when you all make it up, all right?”

Thomas clasps a hand over his mouth and nose, silencing himself. It’s all he can do not to scream, and he reaches out as if this time he might be able to make contact; stop it from happening.

But even before he hits the ground, Roman is dust and honey.

And unfortunately, that’s only the start of it.

See, Remus had known he was going to die from the moment he stepped out of Hades’s house. He’d known and had accepted it with that easy kind of grace that comes from understanding intimately just how much of a joke life was to start with. The odds against them getting this far were mountain-sized stacks against them. He’s happy enough to have defied fate for this long, and a bit annoyed that he fell for a trap more obvious than a neon-lit striptease, but he sure as hell isn’t going to wait for his bones to dissolve and his brain to turn into sweet sugary mush.

If he’s going to die, it’s going to be on his own terms.

So when he feels the rotting begin and hears a soft sigh and a  _ thump _ from far, far behind him, he knows it’s about time. He turns and sees no Roman and Thomas with his hand still over his mouth, and he laughs with a hint of genuine hysteria, and whispers, “C’est la vie, fuckers!” only loud enough for Thomas to hear.

And falls into oblivion with two middle fingers extended up towards the ceiling.

Thomas stops in his tracks, and has to turn away for almost a full minute before he can begin to walk as fast as he can to keep up.

It must be noted quite emphatically that Virgil doesn’t look back, not once. This may come as a surprise, considering his role and nature, but although every one of his instincts screams  _ turn your head and check, just make sure he’s there,  _ the fear of losing just by doing something impulsive like that holds far greater sway.

No, Virgil does not look back – but then again, he doesn’t have to. The honey eats away at him like a cancer

“Shouldn’t have eaten the steak, huh,” he mutters to a Remus who is no longer there to hear it – not that he knows about  _ that,  _ of course, and maybe it’s kinder that way. “It was good steak, it  _ was,  _ but – stupid.  _ Stupid.  _ I said it was stupid. Stupid Virgil, always making the wrong choice. Thought it would help with convincing her, I was so  _ scared –  _ ”

And there is Thomas, listening with increasing horror to this litany of apology, and once again he walks forwards and reaches out but can’t  _ quite  _ make contact. Virgil is shining dimly in the gloom, the cracks rupturing his skin and spilling the golden-red glow outwards. He keeps walking, nonetheless, keeps moving right along with everyone else, but he starts to melt as he goes, and he falls to his knees and then his hands on the ground, and then he’s falling over and then he sighs and is gone.

Patton’s next, almost immediately after. He hears Virgil’s sharp exhale, and he’s a creature of snap-decisions and emotion rather than logic and concrete evidence, and so he turns to look on reflex. He knows how much of a terrible decision it is the moment he does it, when he sees nobody but Thomas, standing over a crumpled purple hoodie, tears running down his cheeks.

He mouths  _ oh _ , and then  _ oh no _ , and Thomas just shakes his head, mouthing,  _ I love you _ over and over and over again.

“I think I’m going to stop talking,” Patton says, looking Thomas in the eyes even as he begins to crumble and fold. “Doesn’t seem very right that we can speak and Thomas can’t, huh?” His face reflects complete misery, but his voice is as cheerful as ever. He’s always been excellent at pretending. “When we’re all back home we can chat properly!”

And he reaches out, back towards Thomas, and their hands nearly touch, just nearly – and then he’s gone.

“An admittedly touching show of solidarity,” Logan murmurs.

Janus, who knows what it means when  _ that tone of voice is used _ , especially where Patton is concerned, says nothing.

The tunnel comes to end – and there, at its conclusion; the start of a rickety old maintenance ladder, leading upwards through the earth.

“Almost there,” Janus mutters; a sweet reassurance that might be for Logan or Thomas or for the stretch of their number who are not longer there to hear it – or all, or none.

Logan places a foot on the lowermost rungs. “I estimate this will take no longer than ten minutes,” he says, and begins to climb. Janus takes hold of the ladder after him, and starts to climb as well. And finally, carefully, tears pouring down his face and practically  _ shaking  _ but ever so careful not to make the slightest of sound, Thomas starts to climb too.

Ten minutes pass, and then twenty, and they are still climbing in this horrible silence that gnaws at all of them. The weaving woman is not there, and neither are her multitudes of children. A thin procession of scarab beetles matches their pace, marching in solemn synchronisation beside them, but it’s not any sort of comfort at all.

Janus knows, by this point, that their numbers have dwindled significantly. He doesn’t know the exact details of  _ how many,  _ and doesn’t want to raise his voice to check, but he suspects it’s all of them. And the fact that so many of them have apparently fallen to weakness is making him  _ think. _

Because the thing is. The thing is, he isn’t really sure that Thomas is there at all.

People are cruel. People  _ lie _ . They lie to get their way, they lie for all sorts of ridiculous and unreasonable reasons. And Hades certainly isn’t a  _ reasonable  _ sort of person _ ,  _ despite both her and her wife’s insistence to the contrary. There is a very,  _ very  _ real possibility that they have been betrayed and misled, all so Missus Hades can get her happy ending. And sure, Janus  _ understands;  _ it’s everyone for themselves out in this horrible little word of theirs. And if he was in her fancy steel-tipped boots, he’d do exactly the same thing to keep the person he loves most right by his side, including cheating a group of passing strangers out of their own happiness.

The best way to get rid of folk like them? Make sure that there’s no way they’d ever be able to succeed in the first place. Take away the person they’re doing it all for before they even notice he’s gone.

And so Janus climbs, following Logan up. And he lies, as he so often does, and this time he lies to himself. He lies and tells himself,  _ just a quick glance won’t do any harm  _ and  _ if Thomas really is there it won’t matter if I’m gone or not,  _ and he lies and lies and keeps on lying, and he turns and he looks and he sees. And his face goes from faintly bewildered to horribly aware to  _ devastated _ , in the space of less than a second – as he realizes just how badly he’s failed. Failed all of them; failed  _ Thomas _ .

He motions sharply with his hand, even as he flakes away, ash spindling away from him like snowflakes. Thomas’s hand goes up to his mouth, cutting off whatever he was about to say. The way Janus is crackling and crumbling to bits is more than physical, but he  _ will  _ protect Thomas to the last of his abilities.

And Thomas cannot say  _ I forgive you –  _ although he does, without anger and without judgement – but it wouldn’t matter because Janus wouldn’t believe him no matter how true it is.

“Thomas – ” says Janus, the thing that matters most blooming on his lips, but it’s torn from him along with everything else as he takes a single step down in Thomas’s direction, and is gone before he can take another.

Logan stops climbing.

“Janus?” he asks softly, but of course there is no response. Nothing at all. He clears his throat once, twice, and then, slightly louder. “Patton?”

Again, nothing.

His breathing grows unsteady; his grip on the ladder’s rungs grows tighter as he calls out the names of each of the ones who are meant to be following in his footsteps. And there’s nothing, nothing, nothing, and he  _ knows.  _ The stretch of climbing left ahead of him seems so much  _ more  _ than it had been mere seconds ago. The light from above glints down at him, a tantalizing snatch of reality.

“Thomas,” he says, and then says, “Hold on. We’re nearly there. I promise you, we are  _ nearly there. _ ”

He redoubles his speed, and the entrance is in sight before he even has time to process that he’s close enough to see it. Ten metres away, then nine, and then seven, and then it’s within arm’s reach and he...

...stops.

Logan knows that Thomas is not a quiet man. Knows it with the selfsame intimacy that he knows Thomas despises carrots and enjoys walks on clear brisk mornings despite never being able to get up early enough to go on them. Thomas is the sort of person who takes up a room, bumps into tables and walls, hums to himself just to fill a silence. It seems near-inconceivable that they could have gone this far in such a quiet stretch of tunnel and not heard him in the least.

He also knows that Thomas is right behind him, but at the same time – all sensory evidence would appear to contradict that one fact. He can’t  _ hear  _ him. He can’t smell him or touch him, and he certainly can’t see him because he’s staring up towards the exit.

Maybe – just maybe –

It’s not empirical or rational or logical in the least, but Logan isn’t pure logic through-and-through no matter how much he claims and wishes it.

Maybe it’s only that, maybe it’s desperate instinct – like a child needing reassurance, because he knows when he emerges there will be no going back, and if Thomas isn’t there he’ll  _ never  _ be there. Maybe it’s because now he knows that every other part of Thomas is dust and ash and he knows that a life without the rest of them is barely a life at all. Or maybe it’s something deeper and more abiding than either of those, a  _ something  _ too formless to describe.

It doesn’t matter which. He takes a deep, deep breath. And he looks down – just a glance. And he sees –

A long stretch of empty space behind him where there should be five others climbing. Thomas clinging to the rungs with one hand, a hand pressed tightly over his mouth as tears run silently down his face.

“Ah,” says Logan, strangely numb. “My curiosity betrays me. I should have known. I – I’m sorry Thomas.”

Thomas slowly draws back his hand. There’s no point to staying silent anymore. They’re lost anyway. “Don’t be,” he says. “I don’t think it was ever going to work.”

“I think I knew that, from the beginning,” Logan replies. “Maybe there was no point to any of this. Maybe we never should have tried in the first place.”

“Don’t say that.” Despite everything, Thomas smiles. A spark of brightness in the dark. “Sometimes trying is all we can do. It’s enough. It has to be.”

Logan tries to smile back, and then shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath as he feels himself breaking. And then he looks down – and smiles properly. “I love you,” he says.

“I love you too,” Thomas replies. “Thank you for everything.”

And Logan crumbles like the burning of a butterfly’s wing.

And Thomas lets go of the rung, and the darkness embraces him

And then there is silence.

*

Somewhere by the side of a distant road, underneath a blossoming, drooping tree, a man’s eyes blink open. He looks up at the flowers far, far above him, and sees a singular bee finally pick one to land on the lip of. It crawls past the petals and disappears from sight to feed.

“Oh,” he says. “My leg hurts.”

A throbbing, distant pain, like it’s somehow disconnected from the rest of him. His head hurts, too, and it’s more immediate. He feels dizzy and strange but also strangely calm. He could not begin to guess  _ why _ , for any of these things.

He is cold, but there is a warmth to the world immediately around him that’s more or less impossible to pin down or describe. He tries to place it, but can only come up with  _ home  _ even though it can’t possibly be anything of the sort.

Someone takes his hand, another someone takes the other. Somebody is cradling his head in their lap, someone else is playing gently with his hair. There is an arm draped across his stomach and a firm palm on his shoulder. There is nobody whatsoever there.

Cars speed past, uncaring. A clumsy two-stick cross is laid at his feet.

“I think...” he says, “I think that falling asleep here would be a bad idea. I don’t think I want to fall asleep alone. I think – that would be miserable.”

_ We’re here _ , says nobody at all.  _ We’re here and we love you and we’re not leaving you, now or ever again. Here, take our love in gold and sunlight, in heartbeat and breeze. We’ve got you. We’re never letting you go. _

“Well, that’s all right then,” he sighs, and closes his eyes against the everburning brightness of the sun, and breathes out, and rests.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks.
> 
> Join me on Tumblr at sometimes-love-is-enough where I wax poetic and philosophical and write increasingly bizarre Sanders Sides fanfiction for you and me both. And here's [my Spotify playlist for this fic](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6d6ExhvLB5BZV9vxhXlOSU), if you want honey and death and Hadestown injected directly into your brain. 
> 
> Also, purple-emo _wrote a poem_ for melliferous!Hades!! an actual proper poem and it's SO cool and i'm still losing my mind over how excellent it is, please [go check it out](https://purple-emo.tumblr.com/post/631799731572670464/lament). !!!!
> 
> See you all the next time I get it together enough to post something new!! I love you.
> 
> EDIT: And if your heart is broken/you hate me for writing this/you want more stories set in this specific universe/you want to read some really really amazingly good fic in general, check out those fics linked below, because three amazing people have written three amazing remixes and _the story continues_ and it's amazing.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [barbed wire and moth wings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29110788) by [HouserOfStories](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HouserOfStories/pseuds/HouserOfStories)
  * [It's Okay My Dear (This Is A Circular Story)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29196831) by [LostyK](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostyK/pseuds/LostyK)
  * [come my way and stay](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29407506) by Anonymous 




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